Glenn to fly the first orbital mission, with M. On November 29, 1961, Gilruth, by then the director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, announced the selection of astronaut John H. Glenn, left, leaving crew quarters with flight surgeon Dr. The next step was to fly an astronaut on an orbital mission.įriendship 7 astronaut John H. The first successful unpiloted orbital Mercury flight using the more powerful Atlas rocket flew in September 1961, followed by the two-orbit flight of chimpanzee Enos on November 29. “Gus” Grissom flew a similar mission on July 21 aboard Liberty Bell 7. Shepard completed the first American spaceflight on May 5, 1961, a 15-minute suborbital mission aboard his Freedom 7 capsule. A similar flight a month later carried Ham, a chimpanzee. After some early launch failures, the first successful unpiloted test of the single-seat spacecraft took place in December 1960, launched into a suborbital flight atop a Redstone rocket. In April 1959, NASA announced the selection of seven astronauts who would undertake the Mercury missions. Gilruth, initiated the project in October 1958 with three goals: orbiting a manned spacecraft, investigating man’s ability to function in space, and safely recovering both spacecraft and crew member. The Space Task Group at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, under the direction of Robert R. Project Mercury was America’s first human space flight program. Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth during the three-orbit Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, aboard the spacecraft he named Friendship 7. The Soviets next kept a cosmonaut in space for a full day. The United States responded with two suborbital piloted Mercury missions, launched atop Redstone rockets. Gagarin, in space on April 12, 1961, on a one-orbit flight around the Earth aboard his Vostok spaceship. The Soviets leaped ahead by placing the first man, Yuri A. Both nations had developed spacecraft to send humans into space and selected a group of pilots to fly those spacecraft. In February 1962, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. A few days before launch, Glenn, right, watches as artist Cecilia “Cece” Bibby paints the name “Friendship 7” on his capsule.
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