From a Cape Canaveral blockhouse the seven Mercury astronauts watched tensely last week as the countdown neared zero. Atop a towering Redstone rocket rested the one-ton Mercury space capsule of the ...

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space in the Mercury MR-3 capsule. He named it Freedom 7, the number signifying the seven Mercury astronauts; NASA called the mission ...

It is 66 years since the 'Mercury Seven', NASA's first astronauts. On April 9, 1959, NASA unveiled the seven astronauts who would be part of the historic Mercury Project, a pioneer ...

The Air and Space Museum currently displays Friendship 7, the Mercury capsule that launched John Glenn on the United States' first orbital mission in February 1962, in its "Milestones of Flight" ...

The U.S. man-in-space program, Project Mercury, scored its greatest triumph last week, when with infinite precision, the robot-manned Mercury capsule MA4 was boosted into orbit, permitted to circle ...