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Program

Project Mercury

Project Mercury (1958–1963) was America’s first crewed spaceflight program. Its goal was to safely put a human into orbit and bring him home — six of the seven selected astronauts, the “Mercury Seven”, flew six crewed missions: two suborbital and four orbital.

Reading time
1 min
Sources
2 cited
Updated
13 Oct 2026

Group portrait of the seven Mercury programme astronauts in silver spacesuits.Real photograph · NASA / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Key facts

Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Contents · 4
  1. 01Overview
  2. 02Selected project Mercury missions
  3. 03Sources
  4. 04Connections

Project Mercury was created a year after Sputnik as America’s answer to the Soviet lead in the space race. Seven selected military pilots — the “Mercury Seven” — became America’s first astronauts and the public face of the program.

Selected project Mercury missions

2 linked entries

Sources & further reading

last verified · 13 October 2026

  1. Swenson, L. S.; Grimwood, J. M.; Alexander, C. C.: This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury (NASA SP-4201), 1966
  2. Grimwood, J. M.: Project Mercury: A Chronology (NASA SP-4001), 1963

Spaceflightpedia. (n.d.). Project Mercury. Retrieved 18 October 2026, from https://spaceflightpedia.com/article/project-mercury

article text — CC-BY-SA · ◉ NASA photography — public domain · ✦ AI illustration — marked, generated from sources

Connections

Connection graph

National Aerona…Project Mercury

Picture index

2 · open image