50 Fun Facts About Project Mercury

Which Mercury astronaut became the first American in space with a suborbital flight in May 1961?

Alan Shepard launched about three weeks after the Soviet Union put the first person in orbit. An estimated 45 million Americans watched the launch on television.

Which chimpanzee rode a Mercury capsule into space in January 1961, three months before the first American astronaut?

Ham, named for the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, pushed levers on cue almost as fast as he did on the ground. He was known only as No. 65 until he came back safely.

What did Gus Grissom have painted on the side of his Mercury capsule before his 1961 flight?

A white crack, copied from the real Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, ran about two-thirds of the way up Liberty Bell 7. The capsule sank after splashdown and lay on the seabed for 38 years.

What did Gordon Cooper do on the launch pad during the countdown to the final Mercury flight in 1963?

Gordon Cooper fell asleep in his capsule before liftoff, and later became the first American to sleep in orbit as well. His flight lasted 34 hours, longer than all five earlier Mercury missions combined.

Which Soviet cosmonaut orbited Earth in April 1961, beating Project Mercury's first astronaut into space by three weeks?

Yuri Gagarin circled the planet once aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. The Soviets followed that August with a flight lasting a full day, before any American had reached orbit at all.

Which NASA mathematician did John Glenn insist must verify the computer's numbers before his 1962 orbital flight?

Katherine Johnson was the person Glenn asked for by name, and he refused to fly until she had checked the calculations. Her story reached cinemas in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.

Which president insisted that Project Mercury's astronauts be chosen only from active-duty military test pilots?

Dwight Eisenhower's rule cut the field to 508 military pilots and shut out civilians, including a young Neil Armstrong. Women could not qualify either, because the services barred them from flying.

What did long launch-pad delays in May 1961 force the first American in space to do inside his suit?

He had to urinate where he lay, and the liquid shorted out electrodes tracking his vital signs. Nobody had fitted a collection device, because the flight was meant to be so short.

Which food did John Glenn squeeze from an aluminum tube to test eating in weightlessness in 1962?

Applesauce went down without trouble, settling experts' worry that swallowing might not work without gravity. The tubes were later dropped because the food could not be seen or smelled.

Which author told the story of the Mercury astronauts in the 1979 book The Right Stuff?

Tom Wolfe interviewed test pilots, the astronauts and their wives for the book. The 1983 film version was nominated for eight Oscars and won four.

John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in February 1962 aboard which Mercury capsule?

Friendship 7 was a name Glenn settled on with his wife and children after they combed dictionaries and a thesaurus. The capsule was later sent on a world tour.

Mission control for Project Mercury's crewed flights sat not in Houston but at which launch site?

Cape Canaveral in Florida housed the Mercury Control Center as well as the launch pads. Flight control only moved to Houston in 1965, two years after the program ended.

Weeks after Project Mercury's first crewed flight in 1961, President Kennedy asked Congress to back which goal?

Landing a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s became the national goal when only one American had been to space, and he had not even reached orbit.

Which famous test pilot, barred from Project Mercury for lacking a college degree, mocked its astronauts as canned meat?

Chuck Yeager, the first person to fly faster than sound, had never earned a degree. He became a critic of the program, calling the men in the capsules spam in a can.

About how long did the first American spaceflight last, from liftoff in Florida to splashdown in the Atlantic?

15 minutes was all it took: the capsule arced 116 miles up and came down about 300 miles out to sea without ever circling the planet.

John Glenn, the first American in orbit, later spent 24 years as a US senator for which state?

Ohio first elected Glenn in 1974 and kept him in the Senate until 1999. He had grown up in the state, in the small town of New Concord.

Gus Grissom, the second American in space, died in a 1967 launch-pad fire while training for which mission?

Apollo 1 never left the ground: a fire during a pre-launch test killed Grissom and his two crewmates. Grissom is the only one of the seven Mercury astronauts who did not live to retire.

Which two-man NASA program followed Project Mercury and perfected the docking of spacecraft in orbit?

Gemini made further Mercury flights seem unnecessary, so plans for more day-long missions and even a three-day one were dropped. Mercury ended after its sixth crewed flight.

Which German-born engineer led the Army team in Alabama that built the rocket for America's first crewed spaceflight?

Wernher von Braun ran the Army's rocket team at Redstone Arsenal, and the rocket took the arsenal's name. He went on to be chief architect of the Saturn V.

Mercury's astronauts insisted that the capsule's design include manual controls and which other feature?

A window in front of the pilot replaced two small portholes from the second crewed flight onward. The manual controls proved their worth on the last flight, when the automatic systems failed before reentry.

Which Mercury Seven astronaut became the only person to fly in all three of NASA's first crewed space programs?

Wally Schirra orbited six times in a capsule he called Sigma 7, later flew the first space rendezvous, and finally commanded a three-man crew in 1968. He was also the first astronaut to go into space three times.

Which Mercury Seven astronaut was grounded by an irregular heartbeat in 1962 and did not reach space until 1975?

Deke Slayton spent the wait deciding which astronauts flew which missions, as director of flight crew operations. He finally flew on a joint mission with Soviet cosmonauts after doctors cleared him in 1972.

What caused Gus Grissom's capsule, Liberty Bell 7, to flood and sink just after splashdown in July 1961?

Its hatch blew open by accident while he waited for the recovery helicopter, and seawater poured in. The flooded capsule was 1,000 pounds too heavy for the helicopter to lift.

The glowing specks John Glenn called fireflies outside his capsule in 1962 were probably what?

Ice crystals venting from the spacecraft itself are the likely answer, lit up at each orbital sunrise. The next Mercury pilot found he could shake more loose by banging on the capsule wall.

Which rocket, built as America's first operational ICBM, carried John Glenn and three more Mercury pilots into orbit?

Atlas had fuel tanks of steel so thin that only the pressure inside kept them rigid, like a balloon. A man-rated version of the missile carried all four of Mercury's orbital pilots.

The Redstone rocket that launched the first two Mercury astronauts was a direct descendant of which German weapon?

The V-2 missile had been developed by many of the same engineers, who were brought to the United States after World War II. Redstone even burned essentially the same propellants.

Which breakfast, eaten before America's first crewed spaceflight in 1961, became a launch-day tradition for astronauts?

Steak and eggs came at the end of three days on a special diet meant to keep the pilot from needing the toilet in flight. The first man to eat it also had toast, coffee and orange juice.

Which Soviet satellite's 1957 launch shocked the United States into creating NASA and starting Project Mercury?

Sputnik 1 raised fears that America was falling into a missile gap. A month later the Soviets orbited a dog, which made it plain that a human would follow.

At age 77, John Glenn returned to orbit in 1998 aboard which Space Shuttle?

Discovery carried Glenn 36 years after his Mercury flight, making him the only person to fly in both programs. He was still a sitting senator when he went.

Residents of which Australian city switched on their lights to greet John Glenn as he passed overhead in 1962?

Perth earned the nickname City of Light for the gesture, which made news around the world. The city did it again when Glenn flew over on the Space Shuttle in 1998.

Which Missouri aircraft maker beat eleven rival bidders for the contract to build the Mercury capsule in 1959?

McDonnell built 20 production capsules in clean rooms, drawing on close to 600 subcontractors. It also made the simulators the astronauts trained in.

The Mercury Seven sold exclusive rights to their personal stories to which magazine for $500,000?

Life paid for access to the astronauts' homes and families, and the seven had agreed to share such money equally whoever flew first. The deal was struck in 1959, before any of them had flown in space.

John Glenn joined the Mercury Seven from which branch of the US military after flying in World War II and Korea?

Glenn flew fighters for the Marines and shot down three MiG-15s. In 1957 he made the first supersonic flight across the United States, coast to coast.

Which record-setting pilot became the first American woman to pass the tests used to screen the Mercury astronauts?

Jerrie Cobb then helped recruit the privately tested group of women later nicknamed the Mercury 13. None of them flew for NASA, which took only military test pilots, a job closed to women.

A sensor reading hinted that John Glenn's heat shield had come loose, so what was left strapped on during reentry?

The retrorocket pack was strapped across the shield, so controllers kept it on in the hope it would hold everything in place. Glenn saw chunks of it fly past as it burned up, and the sensor proved faulty.

What did Mercury astronauts breathe inside the capsule, where cabin pressure was kept far below sea level?

Pure oxygen at low pressure was easier to control, saved weight and ruled out the bends. A cabin fire, which never happened in the program, would have been fought by emptying the gas into space.

Mercury astronauts on the ground took turns in which control-room job, the one voice that talks to a crew in space?

CAPCOM is short for capsule communicator, a title that has outlived the capsules themselves. The radio call sign became simply Houston once flight control moved there.

Which company built the 7090 computers at Goddard that crunched tracking data for Mercury's orbital flights?

IBM machines on the ground did all the calculating, because the Mercury capsule carried no computer of its own. The timing for reentry was worked out in Maryland and radioed up to the pilot.

Which coins did Gus Grissom carry as souvenirs on Liberty Bell 7, where 35 were found when it was raised?

Dimes of the kind known as Mercury dimes made a fitting keepsake for the program. Salvagers found them alongside the astronaut's logbook, flashlight and survival knife.

Which expression did NASA spokesman Shorty Powers, the voice of Mercury Control, make famous in the early 1960s?

A-OK was credited to the first American in space, but the flight tapes show he never said it. Engineers are said to have used it in radio tests because a sharp A cut through static better than a plain OK.

After his 1957 supersonic cross-country flight, future Mercury astronaut John Glenn appeared on which TV game show?

Name That Tune booked Glenn after his coast-to-coast dash made him a minor celebrity. At 36, he believed he was probably too old to go on flying.

Which tire maker developed the pressure suit, built for Navy fighter pilots, that Mercury astronauts wore in silver?

Goodrich had built the suit with the Navy for high-altitude flying. NASA swapped its dark gray shell for aluminum-coated nylon to control heat, and tailored each one to its wearer.

After his Mercury orbital flight, Scott Carpenter spent about a month in 1965 living where for a Navy experiment?

On the ocean floor off California, Carpenter lived in the Sealab II habitat about 200 feet down. On a congratulatory call with the president, the helium he was breathing made him almost unintelligible.

A Florida car dealer who had won the Indianapolis 500 arranged dollar-a-year leases of which sports car for astronauts?

Corvette leases began after a General Motors executive gave one to the first American in space. Three of the seven were soon racing theirs around the launch site.

Project Mercury replaced which earlier Air Force plan for human spaceflight?

Man in Space Soonest, with its awkward acronym MISS, was cancelled in August 1958. Neil Armstrong was among the pilots the Air Force had picked for it.

The Space Task Group that ran Project Mercury was first based at which NASA research center, before moving to Houston?

Langley in Virginia supplied 27 of the group's first 37 engineers. By September 1962 the team had moved to Texas, becoming the core of NASA's new Manned Spacecraft Center.

Which propellant fed the small thrusters that turned the Mercury capsule in pitch, yaw and roll?

Hydrogen peroxide fed two separate sets of jets, automatic and manual, each with its own supply. The pilot could turn the capsule any way he liked but could not change its orbit.

The Little Joe test rocket used in Project Mercury was named after slang for a four in which gambling game?

Craps slang for a roll of four gave the booster its nickname. Little Joe flew eight times from Wallops Island, Virginia, to prove the capsule's safety systems and heat shield.

Which inner-ear disorder grounded the first American in space in 1963, until surgery let him fly again?

Ménière's disease gave him spells of extreme dizziness and nausea, and cost him command of a two-man mission. He ran the astronaut office until he was fit to fly again, and returned to space in 1971.

What did John Glenn buy himself at a local drugstore and carry into orbit on his 1962 Mercury flight?

A camera, a Minolta bought off the shelf, went up only after Glenn persuaded NASA to allow it. Officials had feared that taking pictures would be an unnecessary distraction.