dsc06852.jpg

Detail of the micrometeorite sampler experiment hardware on the interior of the hatch.

Clockwise starting from upper right, the various labels read

Vent Valve

Vent ←

Outer Door
← Close | Open →

Bendix Airlock
Micro-Meteorite Sampler
[unintelligible] Part No: 19E60-1A
Serial No.: 5U
McDonnell Specification
[unintelligible]
The Bendix Corporation
Utica Division

Picture 1 of 2.

Normally, a "meteorite" is a space rock which has made it to a planet's surface, having been a "meteor" when it was streaking through the atmosphere and a "meteoroid" when it was flying through space, so I would have expected it to be a "Micro-Meteoroid Sampler" (much scaled-down cousin to Pegasus).

I searched various Project Mercury documentation for such an experiment, but was unable to find any details. It would seem that this was created for a mission which was never flown. (Project Mercury was an open-ended project, without a predetermined number of flights. At one time, it was proposed that each of the Mercury 7 fly a suborbital flight on a Redstone before progressing to orbital flights on an Atlas. Perhaps the best-known unflown flight was Freedom 7 II, which would have been flown by Alan Shepard, his second spaceflight, on a three-day mission).