The Project Mercury Space Program

Created in 1959, the goals of the Mercury space program were to test man's ability to survive in the harsh environment of space; and to test the manuevers and hardware needed for longer duration and more detailed space exploration. In order to do this, NASA selected seven experienced military test pilots in 1959 from a pool of hundreds of applicants to pilot their one man Mercury spacecraft. These men, known as the Original Mercury Astronauts, would pave the way for all future U.S. manned space missions. The "mercury seven" as they were known, were immortalized in the 1979 book The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. A movie of the same title followed in 1983 and won four academy awards.

Project Mercury was carried out in two phases. The first phase was the preliminary test flights of the capsule and human survivability in outer space. There were two of these flights in which the spacecraft made a sub-orbital ballistic flight launched by the Redstone rocket. The second phase of Project Mercury actually sent U.S. astronauts into Earth orbit. The astronauts that piloted these four missions were launched by the unpredictable Atlas missile.

The Mercury 7 Astronauts

From the Air Force: Donald Kent Slayton (Deke), Virgil Ivan Grissom (Gus), & LeRoy Gordon Cooper (Gordo)
From the Navy: Alan Bartlett Shepard (Al), Malcolm Scott Carpenter (Scott), & Walter Marty Schirra (Wally)
From the Marine Corps: John Herschel Glenn

Of the original seven astronauts, only Scott Carpenter and John Glenn are living today. Gus Grissom was killed in the fire that destroyed the Apollo 1 capsule in 1967. A brain tumor took Deke Slayton in 1993. Alan Shepard died of Leukemia in 1998. Gordon Cooper died of natural causes in 2004. Wally Schirra passed away from a heart attack in 2007.

Flights:

Interesting Fact: Under the FAI rules for spaceflight, a pilot must ride all the way to landing inside of the spacecraft in order for the flight to be official. On Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin was ejected from his capsule after reentering Earth's atmosphere and landed seperate from his spacecraft. All Vostok flights ended in this manner. This fact makes U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard the first person to complete an official space flight.

The Mercury 4 mission flew the same flight profile and trajectory as did MR-3. After splashdown, the recovery rescue helicopter arrived on scene to witness Liberty Bell 7's hatch explode from the capsule prematurely. Astronaut Gus Grissom escaped from the spacecraft as it began to sink. The helicopter pilot Jim Lewis tried relentlessly to raise Liberty Bell 7 from the ocean, but the capsules weight while full of seawater proved too much. The capsule eventually had to be cut loose and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (Liberty Bell 7 was finally raised by Curt Newport in 1999). Gus Grissom, who was close to drowning, was then plucked from the seas and safely flown to his recovery aircraft carrier. Grissom was initially blammed for blowing the hatch, until he was exonerated years later. Ironically, a poorly designed hatch would be one of the causes of Grissom's death, six years later, on Apollo 1.

Interesting Fact: Wally Schirra's flight on MA-8 was in test pilot lingo a "textbook flight." He manually piloted his craft for the majority of the mission and had more than half of his fuel reserves in tact at the end of the mission. He also landed within sight of his recovery aircraft carrier. His capsule Sigma 7, was named for the mathematical symbol Sigma from Calculus, meaning sum. Thus the MA-8 mission was the "sum" of NASA's engineering efforts.

Deke Slayton- The Seventh Mercury Astronaut. Hail to the Chief!

Known simply by his nickname Deke, Donald Kent Slayton was one of the most skilled pilots in the history of United States Air Force. He served at Fighter Operations at Edwards AFB, and was qualified to fly anything with wings. Beginning his career as a bomber pilot in World War II, Slayton flew missions over both Germany and Japan. After the war Deke earned a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and began working for Boeing. Slayton rejoined the military and served in the Korean War as a fighter pilot. He graduated from USAF test pilot school in 1955. Selected as one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts in 1959, Deke Slayton was scheduled to fly America's second orbital space flight. Three months before his flight, Slayton was grounded by NASA doctors because of a heart flutter, or irregular heart beat. He would be the only Mercury astronaut not to fly in Project Mercury. In 1962 Deke Slayton was promoted to Director of Flight Crew Operations. The first person to hold this position. As director, Slayton was responsible for selecting the crews for all Gemini and Apollo flights. He chose Neil Armstrong to be the first man to walk on the moon, and oversaw the efforts to bring the Apollo 13 crew safely back to Earth. Slayton fought long and hard for 10 years to correct his health problem, and was finally returned to flight status in 1972. This was just in time for him to be named to the crew of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. Mercury, Gemini, and the moon flights had all passed Slayton by, but he would get to fly on one of the most important missions in the history of manned space flight. An American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz capsule would dock in orbit in the world's first international space mission. After five years of planning and years of training, the Apollo-Soyuz mission was finally launched in 1975. 16 years after becomming an astronaut, Deke Slayton had finally made in into space. At the time of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, Deke Slayton was the oldest person to travel in space at the age of 51 years old. After the Apollo program ended, Deke Slayton oversaw the flight testing of the U.S. Space Shuttle. He remained with NASA longer than any other Mercury astronaut. Slayton retired from NASA in 1982.

Numbers in parentheses indicate number of flights flown by astronaut. (1) indicates their first space flight.

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