Project Mercury

Project Mercury

Initiated in 1958, completed in 1963, Project Mercury was the United States' first man-in-space program. The objectives of the program, which made six manned flights from 1961 to 1963, were specific:

• To orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth;
  
• To investigate man's ability to function in space;
  
• To recover both man and spacecraft safely.

The Manned Flights Summary

Mercury-Redstone 3 FREEDOM 7

May 5, 1961 Alan B. Shepard, Jr.

15 minutes, 28 secondsSuborbital flight that successfully put the first American in space.

Launch of Freedom 7, the first American manned suborbital space flight. Astronaut Alan Shepard aboard, the Mercury-Redstone (MR-3) rocket is launched from Pad 5. NASA Image.

Mercury-Redstone 4 LIBERTY BELL 7

July 21, 1961 Virgil I. Grissom

15 minutes, 37 secondsAlso suborbital; successful flight but the spacecraft sank shortly after splashdown.

Prior to his own historic mission Astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom checks the installation of the periscope from which astronaut Alan B. Sheppard, Jr. viewed the Earth on his historic ride into space in the Freedom 7 space capsule. NASA Image

Mercury-Atlas 6 FRIENDSHIP 7

February 20, 1962John H. Glenn, Jr.

04 hours, 55 minutes 23 seconds Three-orbit flight that placed the first American into orbit.

Overall view of astronaut John Glenn, Jr., as he enters into the spacecraft Friendship 7 prior to MA-6 launch operations at Launch Complex 14. Astronaut Glenn is entering his spacecraft to begin the first American manned Earth orbital mission. NASA Image.

Mercury-Atlas 7 AURORA 7

May 24, 1962 M. Scott Carpenter

04 hours, 56 minutes, 5 seconds Confirmed the success of Mercury-Atlas 6 by duplicating flight.

Inside Hangar S at the White Room Facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Mercury astronaut M. Scott Carpenter examines the honeycomb protective material on the main pressure bulkhead (heat shield) of his Mercury capsule nicknamed "Aurora 7." NASA Image.

Mercury-Atlas 8 SIGMA 7

October 03, 1962 Walter M. Schirra, Jr.

09 hours, 13 minutes, 11 secondsSix-orbit engineering test flight.

Astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr. in Mercury pressure suit with model of Mercury capsule behind him. NASA Image.

Mercury-Atlas 9 FAITH 7

May 15-16, 1963L. Gordon Cooper, Jr.

34 hours, 19 minutes, 49 secondsLast Mercury mission; completed 22 orbits to evaluate effects of one day in space.

Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper in white room, waiting for Terminal Countdown Demonstrations Test (TCDT) activities to resume in preparation for his Mercury- Atlas 9 launch. NASA Image.

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Repairs Continue to Launch Pad 39A

Launch Pad 39A

A backhoe is used during repair work under way on the flame trench on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Damage to the trench occurred during the launch of Discovery on the STS-124 mission. A 75- by 20-foot section of the east wall was destroyed and debris scattered as far as the pad perimeter fence. Repairs are to be completed before the targeted Oct. 8 launch of Atlantis on the STS-125 mission.

Image Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

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Suiting Up - NASA International Space Station

Suiting Up

Attired in his Russian Orlan spacesuit, Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Expedition 17 flight engineer, prepared for the July 10 spacewalk. During the full dress rehearsal "dry run" that took place on July 8, Kononenko and fellow cosmonaut Commander Sergei Volkov tested translation capability and the status of the suits' communications gear and other systems while in the Pirs Docking Compartment of the International Space Station.Durin the 6-hour, 18-minute spacewalk, they inspected their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft and retrieved a pyro bolt from it.

Image Credit: NASA

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An Orbiting Partnership is Born

An Orbiting Partnership is Born - Apollo-Soyuz

On July 17, 1975, something momentous happened: two Cold War-rivals met in space. When their respective spacecraft rendezvoused and docked, a new era of cooperative ventures in space began.



For more than a decade, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have been regularly living and working together in Earth orbit, first in the Shuttle-Mir program, and now on the International Space Station. But, before the two Cold War-rivals first met in orbit in 1975, such a partnership seemed unlikely.

Since Sputnik bleeped into orbit in 1957, there had indeed been a Space Race, with the U.S. and then-Soviet Union driven more by competition than cooperation. When President Kennedy called for a manned moon landing in 1961, he spoke of "battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny" and referred to the "head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines."But by the mid-70s things had changed.

The U.S. had "won" the race to the moon, with six Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972. Both nations had launched space stations, the Russian Salyut and and American Skylab. With the space shuttle still a few years off and the diplomatic chill thawing, the time was right for a joint mission.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project would send NASA astronauts Tom Stafford, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton and Vance Brand in an Apollo Command and Service Module to meet Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov in a Soyuz capsule. A jointly designed, U.S.-built docking module fulfilled the main technical goal of the mission, demonstrating that two dissimilar craft could dock in orbit. But the human side of the mission went far beyond that.

Image Credit: NASA

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