Space Project Mercury: First US Manned Space Flights

Project Mercury was USA's first manned space flight program, putting the first American astronauts in space. The center of space activities at the time, in the U.S.A, had turned to Huntsville, Ala. As the move to space came to be enhanced due to the Cold War strides of the Soviet Union, specific studies and tests in the USA, conducted by government and industry culminating in 1958 indicated the feasibility of manned space flight. Implementation was initiated to establish a national manned space-flight project, later named Project Mercury, on October 7, 1958 as managed by the Space Task Group (STG) at Langley Field as NASA had just been founded one week before only. Project Mercury became NASA's first major undertaking. The objectives of the program were to place a human-rated spacecraft into orbit around Earth, observe the astronaut's performance in such conditions and safely recover the astronaut and the spacecraft. The Mercury flights proved that humans could live and work in space, and paved the way for the Gemini and Apollo programs as well as for all further human spaceflight. NASA learned a lot from Project Mercury. The agency learned how to put astronauts in orbit around Earth. It learned how people could live and work in space. It learned how to operate a spacecraft in orbit. These lessons were very important. NASA used them in later space programs. Together with the ensuing, two-astronauts crewed Gemini program, the Mercury program prepared NASA for the Apollo program to the Moon. NASA then expanded the existing manned space flight program in December 1961 to include the development of a two-man spacecraft as the program was officially designated Gemini on January 3, 1962. Project Mercury got his name after a Roman god who was famed for being very fast. Each astronaut named his spacecraft. Alan Shepard, the first astronaut of the program to fly, included a 7 in the name of his Mercury capsule. This was because it was the seventh one made. The other astronauts included a 7 also as the number 7 could also have hint to the astronauts' status like ones of the Original Seven group of astronauts. Astronauts made a total of six spaceflights during Project Mercury. Two of those flights reached space and came right back down, or suborbital flights. The other four went into orbit and circled Earth. The first of those six flights was made in 1961 as the last flight was made in 1963. Alan Shepard, the first American in space, flew his Freedom 7 capsule by April 1961. Gus Grissom was the second astronaut to fly in Project Mercury naming his capsule Liberty Bell 7. The third astronaut to fly in Project Mercury was John Glenn. In 1962, he became the first American to orbit Earth, aboard Friendship 7. The second American astronaut to orbit Earth was Scott Carpenter aboard Aurora 7. Astronaut Wally Schirra made the fifth Mercury flight, on Sigma 7. Gordon Cooper flew on the last Mercury mission aboard the Cooper Faith 7 capsule. He spent 34 hours circling Earth in the Faith 7 capsule. Astronaut Deke Slayton had a health problem to stop him from flying a Mercury mission. He flew into space in 1975 in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Total flight time for these missions was 53 hours, 55 minutes and 27 seconds. John Glenn is the only Mercury astronaut to have flown aboard a space shuttle when he launched aboard Discovery in 1998. To maintain regular communications with the first orbiting astronauts in Project Mercury, NASA established the global Spacecraft Tracking and Data Network, a series of tracking stations around the world, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Hawaii’s strategic location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean made it a natural for one the stations. The station situated on the Garden Isle of Kauai became operational in June 1961 and supported Project Mercury through May 1963. The station was re-configured to support the Gemini Program from April 1964 to November 1966 and again to support Apollo flights. In 1989, with the advent of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to support human space flights, the Kauai tracking station was no longer needed in that role

Before astronauts of Project Mercury actually flew, NASA conducted several test flights. These launches did not have people aboard. These test flights, of which early failures, helped NASA find and fix problems as a first successful test of the single-seat spacecraft without an astronaut on board took place in December 1960, launched into a suborbital flight atop a Redstone rocket. After two first suborbital crewed flight of Mercury 3 and 4, the first successful uncrewed Mercury orbital flight using the more powerful Atlas rocket launched in September 1961. A rhesus monkey, Sam, and two chimpanzees, Ham and Enos, also helped make sure Mercury was safer, flying in Mercury capsules. Sam and Ham made suborbital flights. Sam flew on a 'Little Joe' rocket. Ham flew on a Redstone rocket on the Mercury Redstone-2 on Jan. 31, 1961 for a 16-minute flight, 4 months before the first manned flight. Enos launched on an Atlas rocket after the success of the first unmanned orbital flight in September 1961. He made two orbits around Earth. All three primates made it home safely. Two types of rockets, on a other hand, were eventually used for Project Mercury. The first two of the six flights with an astronaut on board used a Redstone rocket. The four following, which reached orbit, used a Atlas rocket. Both rockets were originally designed as missiles for the United States military. The first Atlas rocket launched with a Mercury capsule exploded. The first Mercury-Redstone launch only went about four inches off the ground! A single stage with a single engine generating about 78,000 pounds of thrust powered the Redstone rocket. For comparison, the escape rocket on top of the Apollo/Saturn V produced nearly twice that power. In terms of launch team, the one of the Mercury project was working inside a blockhouse near the launch pad. As far as the historical flight of Major John Glenn is concerned, it launched from Complex 14 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) on the Atlantic coast

a Mercury flight preparing for launch, likely atop a Atlas rocket. picture site 'Amateur Astronomy'

Flight ID	Spacecraft	Mission Date	Astronaut	Flight Summary
Mercury-Redstone 3	Freedom 7	May 5, 1961	Alan B. Shepard, Jr.	15 minutes, 28 seconds. Suborbital flight that successfully put the first American in space. A Mercury Redstone 1 (MR 1) spacecraft was to be the first unpiloted, sub-orbital test flight of the spacecraft that would put the first American in space
Mercury-Redstone 4	Liberty Bell 7	July 21, 1961	Virgil I. Grissom	15 minutes, 37 seconds. Suborbital flight, successful flight but the spacecraft sank shortly after splashdown
Mercury-Atlas 6	Friendship 7	February 20, 1962	John H. Glenn, Jr.	4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds. Three-orbit flight that placed the first American into orbit. It launched from Cape Canaveral (Florida) Launch Complex 14. The capsule reached a apogee of 162 statute miles and a velocity of 17,500 mph; it landed approximately 800 miles southeast of KSC in the vicinity of Grand Turk Island. The mission had flown aboard a large U.S. flag, which later was flown in space aboard a Space Shuttle in 1995 to celebrate the 100th crewed mission of the U.S. space programs. Problems during the flight arose, with first a failure of the automatic control system. Major Glenn went manual and using the electrical fly-by-wire system, and continued that move during the second, third orbit and during re-entry according to the test performed at Earth before the flight. Telemetry further indicated the spacecraft's heat shield was loose which forced Glenn to leave the retrorocket pack in place to steady the heat shield during re-entry, as big chunks of burning material came flying by the window during that. John Glenn instantly became a hero. President John Kennedy awarded him the Space Congressional Medal of Honor. Schools and streets across the country were named after him. And a ticker tape parade in New York City celebrated his mission
Mercury-Atlas 7	Aurora 7	May 24, 1962	Scott M. Carpenter	4 hours, 56 minutes, 5 seconds. Confirmed the success of the Mercury-Atlas 6 by duplicating the flight, and performing 3 orbits too
Mercury-Atlas 8	Sigma 7	October 3, 1962	Walter M. Schirra	9 hours, 13 minutes, 11 seconds. Six-orbit engineering test flight. A malfunctioning valve delayed the launch to Oct. 3 instead of Sep. 29
Mercury-Atlas 9	Faith 7	May 15-16, 1963	L. Gordon Cooper, Jr.	34 hours, 19 minutes, 49 seconds. The last Mercury mission; completed 22 orbits to evaluate effects of one day in space. Cooper's flight stretched the capabilities of the Mercury capsule to the limits. His 34-hour flight lasted more than three times the longest U.S. human space flight until that time, and far exceeded the initial design capability of the capsule. Cooper conducted 11 experiments that included monitoring radiation levels, deploying a strobe beacon to see how well Cooper could track it, observing zodiacal lights, and taking photographs of the Earth. During his 17th orbit, Cooper transmitted slow-scan black and white television images back to the Mercury Control Center (MCC) at Cape Canaveral, the first TV transmission from an American crewed spacecraft. Although plans called for Cooper to sleep as much as eight hours, he slept only intermittently during portions of the flight. Faith 7 performed well until the 19th orbit, when a faulty sensor erroneously indicated that the spacecraft was starting reentry. Two orbits later, a short circuit knocked out the automatic stabilization and control system. When the carbon dioxide level began to rise in the cabin and in his spacesuit, Cooper reported to MCC in his usual understated manner like 'Things are beginning to stack up a little.' Despite these malfunctions, he managed to make a perfect manual reentry concluding a highly successful mission. Faith 7 splashed down about 80 miles southeast of Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean, just four miles from the recovery ship USS Kearsarge

->More About Shepard Suborbital Flight!
Unfavorable weather on May 2, 1961 delayed the flight until next May 5. Astronaut Alan Shepard climbed aboard the Freedom 7 capsule at 5:15 a.m. for the planned 7:20 a.m. liftoff from Launch Complex 5 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch however was held for an hour to allow cloud cover to clear. Next, a inverter in the electrical system had to be repaired. Once the countdown began again, another hold was required to recheck a computer at Goddard Space Flight Center (the Greenbelt, Maryland-based center was responsible for management and operations of Project Mercury's communication networks). Finally, at 9:34 a.m., the Mercury Redstone rocket roared to life with 78,000 pounds of thrust. 'Roger, liftoff and the clock has started,' Shepard radioed to Mercury Control at the Cape. A estimated 45 million American television viewers were watching as the sleek, 83-foot launch vehicle rose into the blue Florida sky. Thousands more 'bird watchers' flocked to Cocoa Beach and Port Canaveral to witness the historic event. After the flight, Shepard reported the launch phase went smoothly as 'the cockpit section experienced no vibration and I did not even have to turn up my radio receiver to full volume to hear the radio transmissions.' He was subjected to 6.3G just before shut down of the Redstone engine, two minutes and 22 seconds after liftoff. The capsule separated from the launch vehicle 10 more seconds after and soon after America's first space traveler got his first view of the Earth. 'What a beautiful view,' Shepard said. He now could take control of the ship with a hand controller as such a option had not been available to Gagarin on Vostok. He switched from pitch, to yaw and roll in that order. After a short suborbital flight, Freedom 7's retrorockets fired five minutes, 15 seconds after liftoff to begin the return to Earth. Strapped atop the heat shield, the retro pack was successfully jettisoned for the return through the atmosphere as the astronaut had to endure 11G. A experienced Naval aviator, Shepard reported that the splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean 'did not seem any more severe than a catapult shot from an aircraft carrier.' After the main hatch was blown off by rescue team, Shepard was hoisted into a Marine helicopter. Both astronaut and Freedom 7 were flown to the deck of the Lake Champlain where sailors cheered the arrival. The flight of Mercury Redstone-3 lasted 15 minutes, 22 seconds with Freedom 7 ascending to an altitude of 116 miles, splashing down 302 miles from Cape Canaveral

The Original Seven when introduced on April 9th, 1959. Front row, left to right: Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter; back row: Alan Shepard, Gus Grisson, Gordon Cooper. picture site 'Amateur Astronomy'

The 'Original Seven'

The seven astronauts were the survivors of a lengthy and arduous selection process to become US first astronauts. With President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s concurrence, NASA decided that the best candidates would be found among the active military test pilots. From a total of 508 elite service records screened in January 1959 at the military personnel bureaus in Washington, 110 men were found to meet the minimum standards specified earlier. This list of names included five Marines, 47 Navy men, and 58 Air Force pilots. Based upon their performance and medical history for a top-secret briefing on what would be asked of them as astronauts as well as preliminary medical, physical and psychiatric evaluations. Thirty-two men survived that step and went on to more rigorous and comprehensive screenings. The candidates first underwent a weeklong series of intensive medical examinations at the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico. This was followed by another week of arduous physical and psychological fitness testing at the Wright Aeromedical Laboratory in Ohio. The purpose was to find the absolute fittest men for the job of being US first astronauts. The evaluation committee at Headquarters had decided to divide the list of 110 arbitrarily into three groups which eventually were allowed to be reviewed as the number of six finalists was finally agreed. All Mercury 7 astronauts went on to have stellar careers in the space program. NASA also arranged for exclusive deals with LIFE magazine to cover the astronauts as they progressed from newly minted heroes to actually flying in space, and the deal extended to coverage of their wives who stayed home. Seven astronauts finally passed the review, the 'Original Seven.' They were Lieutenant Colonel John Herschel Glenn, Jr., came from the United States Marine Corps. From the Navy, Walter Marty Schirra, Jr., and Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., both lieutenant commanders, and Lieutenant Malcolm Scott Carpenter. The Air Force assigned three captains, Donald Kent Slayton, Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., and Virgil I. Grissom. The whole 7 were to have 'stellar' careers all along the U.S. space porgram. NASA had also signed exclusive agreements with the LIFE magazine to cover the 7's training until their real flight in space as such agreements also concerned the 7's spouses. The astronauts were first and foremost military test pilots as they behaved like typical pilots. In training to reach to space they became to the public's eyes a team of personalities as well as a crew of pilots. The seven Mercury astronauts were introduced to the public on April 9th, 1959, at a press conference in Washington, in the house's ballroom, at the Dolley Madison House on Lafayette Square, in Washington, the then transitory NASA's headquarters. They were to be called 'astronauts,' as the pioneers of ballooning had been called 'Argonauts,' as they were to sail into a new, uncharted ocean.

The group started their journeys into space at NASA Langley with the formation of the Space Task Group, which stayed in Hampton until June, 1962.Six of the seven, except for Glenn, moved with their families to Hampton Roads. Glenn stayed in military quarters at Langley Air Force Base as he commuted home to northern Virginia on weekends. Astronauts' preparation at Langley included a rigorous regimen of physical exercise, including diving operations designed to simulate weightlessness and the kind of sensory disorientation that they might experience during reentry from space. Major John Glenn, as far as he is concerned, was a former World War II and Korean War Marine combat pilot as he was a record-setting test pilot before becoming a astronaut. Scott Carpenter served like CapCom during Glenn's mission which launched from the Launch Complex 14 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Glenn, during his historical flight, was supposed to remain in space longer, but Flight Director Chris Kraft cut the mission short after a malfunction light came on showing that the heat shield might have come loose, which proved untrue. The Friendship 7 capsule eventually splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean where it was picked up by destroyer USS Noa. The capsule however had overshot its expected landing site. Major John Glenn left NASA soon after the Mercury mission and he entered the political world where he would serve in the United State Senate from his home state of Ohio and make a run for the White House. He enlisted to fly again in 1998, this time aboard space shuttle Discovery, then aged 77

->First Soviet Cosmonauts
In the Soviet Union, a similar process to the selection of 7 U.S. astronauts of the Mercury program occured as it selected its first group of cosmonauts beginning in late 1959. After reviewing the records of Soviet Air Force pilots who met the age, weight and height criteria and putting those pilots through grueling interviews, the Central Military Scientific Aviation Hospital in Moscow conducted medical evaluations on 154 promising candidates in groups of 20. Of these, 29 passed all the tests but the selection committee decided to select only the top 20 candidates to form the Soviet Union’s first group of cosmonauts. In sharp contrast to the very public announcement of the Mercury astronauts’ selection, the Soviets chose to keep their selection on Feb. 25, 1960, secret. They would not identify any cosmonauts until they safely reached orbit, and the names of the unflown cosmonauts remained unknown until the advent of Glasnost in the 1980's. On May 30, 1960, Soviet managers selected six from among the 20 cosmonauts in training for in-depth preparations for upcoming Vostok space missions. That group included Gagarin, Kartashov, Nikolayev, Popovich, Titov and Varlamov. In July, Kartashov and Varlamov suffered injuries during training that led to their medical disqualification from the cosmonaut team, and Nelyubov and Bykovsky replaced them in the elite group known as the 'Vanguard Six.' An official order by the Soviet Air Force commander formally endorsed this 'group within a group' on Oct. 11, 1960. After further training and examinations, on Jan. 18, 1961, managers selected the top three from among this elite group, in priority ranking Gagarin, Titov and Nelyubov. Each of the three men hoped that he would make the Soviet Union’s, and quite possibly, the world’s first human spaceflight. The Soviet Air Force established the Cosmonaut Training Center, today named after Gagarin, outside of Moscow on Jan. 11, 1960, under the direction of Yevgeni A. Karpov, himself an unsuccessful candidate for the cosmonaut team. Cosmonaut training began March 15, 1960, at the nearby Frunze airfield. Of the 20 cosmonauts selected in 1960, only 12 completed space flights

The Project Development in Details

NASA Ames Research Center played a key role in NASA's first major human spaceflight mission of the Mercury program. A such researches had begun early, in May 1952, when the NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics which had been established since 1913 like the U.S. agency for aeronautics) Main Committee had passed a resolution, at the urging of the U.S. Air Force, that the NACA Laboratories begin studying how to solve various problems associated with human spaceflight and particularly problems encountered by the spacecraft during its high-speed re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Something needed to be done to prevent those spacecraft from burning up before they reached Earth. Led by legendary engineer H. Julian "Harvey" Allen beginning in the early 1950s, the Ames laboratory solved many of the major problems of re-entry like most of the basic research behind the design of the Mercury capsule, particularly the Mercury capsule's distinctive appearance with a curved, blunt shape to facilitate its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, or the theory of the 'blunt body hypersonics.' Another Ames pioneer in the Mercury Project was Alfred J. Eggers, chief of Ames' Supersonic Wind Tunnel Branch, and a key member of the NASA Research Steering Committee on Manned Space Flight, chaired by Harry Goett, chief of the Full Scale and Flight Research Division at Ames. Another Ames pioneer in hypersonic spacecraft, Clarence "Sy" Syvertson also participated into developing a unique set of research simulators and free-flight ballistic ranges to determine aerodynamically stable capsules. Ames also performed key tests on the launch abort system. Ames continued conducting wind tunnel tests of capsule designs until NASA selected a prime contractor, McDonnell Aircraft Co., to build the Mercury capsule in 1959. The work then shifted from NASA Ames to full-scale flight tests of capsules built at NASA's Langley and Lewis (now Glenn) research centers

-> More About Blunt Bodies
First atmospheric entry tests used ballistic missiles featured long nosecones with very narrow tips as they had relatively low drag when entering the atmosphere at high speeds, which means that they would cut through the air easily albeit often leading to excessive heating, which commonly melted the surface of the rockets. Blunt bodies theory makes that the air applied against such a surface cannot get out of the way quickly enough and acts like a cushion that pushes the heated shock layer away from the vehicle. Now, since most of the hot gasses are no longer in direct contact with the vehicle, the heat energy would stay in the shocked gas and simply move around the vehicle and dissipate into the atmosphere. The blunt body desing served for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space capsules

The objectives of the Mercury Project, as stated at the time of project go-ahead, were as follows: place a manned spacecraft in orbital flight around the Earth. Investigate man's performance capabilities and his ability to function in the environment of space. Recover the man and the spacecraft safely. After the objectives were established for the project, a number of guidelines were established to insure that the most expedient and safest approach for attainment of the objectives was followed. The basic guidelines that were established are as follows: existing technology and off-the-shelf equipment should be used wherever practical. The simplest and most reliable approach to system design would be followed. An existing launch vehicle would be employed to place the spacecraft into orbit. A progressive and logical test program would be conducted. More detailed requirements for the spacecraft were established as follows: the spacecraft must be fitted with a reliable launch-escape system to separate the spacecraft and its crew from the launch vehicle in case of impending failure. The pilot must be given the capability of manually controlling spacecraft attitude. The spacecraft must carry a retrorocket system capable of reliably providing the necessary impulse to bring the spacecraft out of orbit. A zero-lift body utilizing drag braking would be used for reentry. The spacecraft design must satisfy the requirements for a water landing. The Mercury spacecraft came to be featured with a escape tower, the retrorocket system on the blunt end of the spacecraft, and the simple blunt-body shape without wings, typical of US first spaceships. The astronaut could manually controlled the attitude of the spacecraft during orbital maneuvers, retrofire, and reentry. Recovery of the spacecraft and astronauts after each flight were to be performed by recovery forces which included aircraft carriers and destroyers. Basically, the equipment used in the spacecraft was derived from off-the-shelf equipment or through the direct application of existing technology, although some notable exceptions were made in order to improve reliability and flight safety, including a automatic blood-pressure measuring system for use in flight, instruments for sensing the partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the oxygen atmosphere of the cabin and suit, respectively. Redundancy probably increased the complexity of the systems more than any other requirement. Because the spacecraft had to be qualified by space flight first without a man onboard and then because the reactions of man and his capabilities in the space environment were unknown, provisions for a completely automatic operation for the critical spacecraft functions were provided and thus the need for numerous redundant systems. The Mercury spacecraft was a small capsule with room for one astronaut, who stayed seated during the flight. Mercury spacecraft were built in St. Louis and astronauts routinely travelled to the city for simulator time. As far as the launcher was concerned, the adaptation of an existing missile, the Atlas, was adopted. The modifications to this launch vehicle for use in the Mercury Project included the addition of a means to sense automatically impending catastrophic failure of the launch vehicle and provisions to accommodate a new structure that would form the transition between the upper section of the launch vehicle and the spacecraft. One has to remember that, by 1950, however, only instrumented sounding rockets, fired to ever higher altitudes in both the United States and the Soviet Union, had reached into space before falling earthward. Although a number of these experimental shots carried living organisms (everything from fungus spores to monkeys in the United States, mainly dogs in the U.S.S.R.) the data acquired from telemetry and from occasional recovery of rocket nose cones had not shown conclusively how long organisms could live in space, or indeed whether man could survive at all outside the protective confines of his atmosphere. Scientists still were hesitant to predict how a human being would behave under conditions to be encountered in space flight. Thus while space flight became technologically practicable, physiologically and psychologically it remained an enigma. In the early 1950s an acceleration of efforts in upper-atmospheric and space medical research accompanied the quickened pace of rocket development in the USA and the Soviet Union. During the next few years medical specialists, profiting from substantial progress in telemetering clinical data, learned a great deal about what a man could expect when he went into the forbidding arena of space. Much of the confidence with which the engineers of Project Mercury in 1958 approached the job of putting a man into orbit and recovering him stemmed from the findings of hundreds of studies made in previous years on the human factors in space flight. Since the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was interested almost exclusively in the technology of flight, research in the medical problems of space flight, like aviation medicine in previous decades, was the province primarily of the military services and of some civilian research organizations receiving funds from the military. Of the three services, the United States Air Force, rich in background in aeromedical research and assuming that space medicine was but an extension of aviation medicine, undertook most of the early inquiry into the psycho-physiological problems of extra-atmospheric flight

More anecdotically, the Mercury astronauts had a special connection with Chevrolet Corvette cars. That is due to that Alan Shepard owned a 1957 Corvette when chosen for the space program and, when back Earth, he was presented a brand new 1962 car by General Motors President. That eventually turned into that 6 of 7 of the Mercury astronauts came to drive Corvettes, in part because of a special lease deal from a Chevrolet dealer. John Glenn only chose a Chevy Station Wagon as far as he was concerned. Chevrolet Corvettes also became distinctive for the crews of Apollo 12 or 15 as the Lunar Rover Vehicle itself, on a other hand, was a GM product