Project Mercury (1959–63)
Who was the first American astronaut in space?
NASA
Project Mercury (1959–63). Shortly after the Space Race began, an early objective was to get a person into Earth orbit as soon as possible, therefore the simplest spacecraft that could be launched by existing rockets was favored. U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest program looked at many manned spacecraft designs, ranging from rocket planes like the X-15, to small ballistic space capsules. By 1958, the space plane concepts were eliminated in favor of the ballistic capsule. When NASA was created that same year, the Air Force program was transferred to it and renamed "Project Mercury". The first seven astronauts were selected among candidates from the Navy, Air Force and Marine test pilot programs. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard "Freedom 7", launched by a Redstone booster on a 15-minute ballistic (suborbital) flight. John Glenn became the first American to be launched into orbit by an Atlas launch vehicle on February 20, 1962 aboard "Friendship 7". Glenn completed three orbits, after which three more orbital flights were made, culminating in L. Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit flight "Faith 7", May 15–16, 1963. The Soviet Union (USSR) competed with its own single-pilot spacecraft, Vostok. They beat the U.S. for the first man in space, by launching cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into a single Earth orbit aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961, one month before Shepard's flight. In August 1962, they achieved an almost four-day record flight with Andriyan Nikolayev aboard Vostok 3, and also conducted a concurrent Vostok 4 mission carrying Pavel Popovich.