Mercury-Atlas 6 Projected Orbiting at NORAD 1962-01-24 US Air Force

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Silent scenes at the North American Air Defense Command headquarters in Colorado show the flight path of the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, in which astronaut John Glenn orbited the Earth three times in the Mercury spacecraft 'Friendship 7.' Also shown is some of the early 1960s equipment at NORAD, including a Philco TRANSAC S-2000 computer, and a "scoreboard" which shows that the US had 122 total objects in space, vs the USSR with only 5.

Originally a public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Atlas_6

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Mercury-Atlas 6 (MA-6) was the third human spaceflight for the US and part of Project Mercury. Conducted by NASA on February 20, 1962, the mission was piloted by astronaut John Glenn, who performed three orbits of the Earth, making him the first US-astronaut to orbit the Earth.

The Mercury spacecraft, named Friendship 7, was carried to orbit by an Atlas LV-3B launch vehicle lifting off from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. After four hours and 56 minutes in flight the spacecraft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and was safely taken aboard the USS Noa...

At 14:47 UTC, after two hours and 17 minutes of holds and three hours and 44 minutes after Glenn entered Friendship 7, engineer T. J. O'Malley pressed the button in the blockhouse launching the spacecraft. At liftoff Glenn's pulse rate climbed to 110 beats per minute (bpm)...

As Friendship 7 crossed Cape Canaveral at the start of its second orbit, flight systems controller Don Arabian  noticed that "Segment 51", a sensor providing data on the spacecraft landing system, was giving a strange reading. According to the reading, the heat shield and landing bag were no longer locked in position. If this were the case, the heat shield was only being held against the spacecraft by the straps of the retro package. Mercury Control ordered all tracking sites to monitor "Segment 51" closely and advise Glenn that the landing-bag deploy switch should be in the "off" position.

Glenn was not immediately aware of the problem, but he became suspicious when site after site asked him to make sure that the landing-bag deploy switch was off...

During Glenn's orbits, Mercury Control had been monitoring the problem with "Segment 51". The Hawaiian tracking station asked Glenn to toggle the landing bag deploy switch into the automatic position. If a light came on, reentry should take place while retaining the retro pack. Given the earlier questions about the landing bag switch, Glenn realized there must be a possible problem with a loose heat shield. The test was run but no light appeared. Glenn also reported there were no bumping noises during spacecraft maneuvers.

Mercury Control was still undecided on the course of action to take. Some controllers thought the retrorocket pack should be jettisoned after retrofire, while other controllers thought the retro pack should be retained, as added assurance that the heat shield would stay in place. Flight Director Chris Kraft and Mission Director Walter C. Williams, decided to keep the retro pack in place during reentry... After the mission was over, the "Segment 51" warning light problem was later determined to be a faulty sensor switch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philco_computers#S-2000

Philco was one of the pioneers of transistorized computers. After the company developed the surface barrier transistor, which was much faster than previous point-contact types, it was awarded contracts for military and government computers. Commercialized derivatives of some of these designs became successful business and scientific computers. The TRANSAC (Transistor Automatic Computer) Model S-1000 was released as a scientific computer. The TRANSAC S-2000 mainframe computer system was first produced in 1958, and a family of compatible machines, with increasing performance, was released over the next several years.

However, the mainframe computer market was dominated by IBM. Other companies could not deploy resources for development, customer support and marketing on the scale that IBM could afford, making competition in this segment difficult after the introduction of the IBM 360 family. Philco went bankrupt and was purchased in 1961 by Ford Motor Company, but the computer division carried on until the Philco division of Ford exited the computer business in 1963...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command