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Schirra flew Apollo 7 in 1968, the first crewed Apollo mission, in Grissom's place, and became the only astronaut to fly Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Cooper piloted the last Mercury spaceflight, Mercury-Atlas 9 , in 1963, and in 1965 became the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight when he flew as command pilot of Gemini 5 .
Mercury-Atlas 7, launched May 24, 1962, was the fourth crewed flight of Project Mercury. The spacecraft, named Aurora 7 , was piloted by astronaut Scott Carpenter . He was the sixth human to fly in space.
The Mercury project gained popularity, and its missions were followed by millions on radio and TV around the world. Its success laid the groundwork for Project Gemini , which carried two astronauts in each capsule and perfected space docking maneuvers essential for crewed lunar landings in the subsequent Apollo program announced a few weeks ...
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967) was an American engineer and pilot in the United States Air Force, as well as one of the original men, the Mercury Seven, selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for Project Mercury, a program to train and launch astronauts into outer space.
Apart from the grounded Slayton, he was the only one of the Mercury Seven who had not yet flown in space. [27] [24] Cooper's selection was publicly announced on November 14, 1962, with Shepard designated as his backup. [28] Project Mercury had begun with a goal of ultimately flying an 18-orbit, 27-hour mission, known as the manned one-day ...
In the final stages of Project Mercury, Shepard was scheduled to pilot the Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10), which was planned as a three-day mission. [90] He named Mercury Spacecraft 15B Freedom 7 II in honor of his first spacecraft, and had the name painted on it, [91] but on June 12, 1963, NASA Administrator James E. Webb announced that Mercury had ...
Mercury-Redstone 3, or Freedom 7, was the first United States human spaceflight, on May 5, 1961, piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard. It was the first crewed flight of Project Mercury . The project had the ultimate objective of putting an astronaut into orbit around the Earth and returning him safely.
In 1959, he became one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, which was the United States' first effort to put humans into space. On October 3, 1962, he flew the six-orbit, nine-hour, Mercury-Atlas 8 mission, in a spacecraft he nicknamed Sigma 7, becoming the fifth