Today, images of the Mercury Seven standing next their spacecraft are already beginning to look a bit dated; it seems scarcely believable that these men in silver suits, evocative of a 1950s science fiction B-movie, orbited the earth in shuttlecock-shaped cans. Future generations will likely look upon the Mercury capsule the way we now view medieval woodcuts of the first diving bells – why would anyone enter such a vessel, let alone use it to submerge themselves in an environment that would promptly kill them if it failed? Regardless of the mortal, global struggle that happened to place them in outer space, the answer, for the Mercury Seven, will always be: because it was there.
The Manned Mercury Missions
Mercury-Redstone 3; May 5, 1961
Spacecraft: Freedom 7
Astronaut: Alan B. Shepard Jr.
A suborbital, ballistic-trajectory flight that lasted 15 minutes, 28 seconds, Mercury-Redstone 3 successfully put the first American into space.
Mercury-Redstone 4; July 21, 1961
Spacecraft: Liberty Bell 7
Astronaut: Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom
A duplicate of Shepard’s mission that lasted 15 minutes, 37 seconds. The flight was successful, but the spacecraft sank shortly after splashdown.
The first U.S. spaceship was a cone-shaped one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. Two meters (6 ft, 10 in) long, 1.9 meters (6 ft, 2 1/2 in) in diameter, a 5.8 meter (19 ft, 2 in) escape tower was fastened to the cylinder of the capsule. The blunt end was covered with an ablative heat shield to protect it against the 3,000 degree heat of entry into the atmosphere. In this image, insignias from each of six manned Mercury 7 missions and autographs of the original seven NASA astronauts encircle the Mercury spacecraft. Each astronaut named his capsule and added the numeral 7 to denote the teamwork of the original astronauts. NASA image
Mercury-Atlas 6; Feb. 10, 1962
Spacecraft: Friendship 7
Astronaut: John H. Glenn Jr.
The first American to orbit the Earth, Glenn orbited three times and was in space for 4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds.
Mercury-Atlas 7; May 24, 1962
Spacecraft: Aurora 7
Astronaut: M. Scott Carpenter
Confirmed the success of Glenn’s mission by duplicating the flight, but left orbit a few seconds late, resulting in a splashdown 250 miles from the targeted site.
Mercury-Atlas 8; Oct. 3, 1962
Spacecraft: Sigma 7
Astronaut: Walter M. Schirra, Jr.
The first longer-duration Mercury mission, Schirra’s engineering test flight lasted 9 hours, 13 minutes, 11 seconds, and orbited the Earth six times. The first NASA mission to splash down in the Pacific.
Mercury-Atlas 9; May 15-16, 1963
Spacecraft: Faith 7
Astronaut: L. Gordon Cooper
The last Mercury mission lasted 34 hours, 19 minutes, 49 seconds, and logged 22 orbits to evaluate the effects of a full day in space.
Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, one of the original Mercury Seven, was prevented from flying in space until the Apollo-Soyuz mission, due to a heart murmur.