The Seven Mercury Astronauts. Credit: NASA
The United States’ first manned space flight project was called Project Mercury. The program was actually initiated in 1958 when the National Advisory Committee on Aeronauts (NACA), NASA’s predecessor, responded to the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik spacecraft in 1957 with plans to send humans into space. The actual period of launch activity for Project Mercury was May 1961-May 1963. Six manned flights were launched into space during that time; two suborbital and four achieving Earth orbit. The program successfully demonstrated that humans can function ably as a pilot-engineer-experimenter without problems, and that the human body responds normally for periods at least 34 hours of weightless flight (the length of the longest flight, Mercury 9). The rockets used for this program were the Redstone and Atlas rockets.
Below are links to descriptions and summaries of each of the Project Mercury flights.
Mercury 1
Mercury 2
Mercury 3
Mercury 4
Mercury 6
Mercury 7
Mercury 7 astronauts
Mercury 8
Mercury 9
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