The Mercury Seven
Published on Apr 9, 2009 at 10:31 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under NASA, history, space exploration.
Fifty years ago, the newly created NASA announced the selection of seven military test pilots who would be serving as America’s first astronauts. Officially, they are Astronaut Group 1, but most people call them the Mercury Seven. Selected from Naval aviators were Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Walter Marty (Wally) Shirra, Jr., and Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr.. Selected from Air Force pilots were Leroy Gordon (Gordo) Cooper, Jr., Virgil Ivan (Gus) Grissom, and Donald Kent (Deke) Slayton. Rounding out the seven, from the United States Marine Corps, was John Herschel Glenn, Jr.
Alan Shepard was the first on the seven to fly into space, lifting off on May 5, 1961, atop a Redstone Rocket in the Freedom 7 capsule. The flight lasted all of 15.5 minutes, but it was an important milestone for the American space program. In 1964, Shepard was grounded for medical reasons due to a problem in his inner ear. Eventually, however, he was able to regain full flight status after surgery to correct his ear problems. Shepard flew into space again, almost ten years after his first flight, on January 31, 1971. The second flight into space, though, was atop a giant Saturn V rocket sending him to the Moon with the Apollo 14 mission. Though he had only a quarter hour of spaceflight experience, both of his crew mates were rookies, so he had the greatest experience and was named commander of the Apollo 14 mission. Shepard died July 21, 1998.
The second American sent into space (excluding animals sent on test flights) was Gus Grissom aboard Liberty Bell 7 on July 21, 1961. Grissom’s flight was a sub-orbital mission very similar to Shepard’s, lasting about the same length of time. However, after splashing down into the Atlantic Ocean, the explosive bolts on the Liberty Bell 7’s hatch blew the hatch off. The explosive bolts were a safety measure to allow the astronaut to quickly evacuate the capsule in the event of an emergency. But, the hatch blowing off in the ocean allowed water to fill the capsule, and it sank. Liberty Bell 7 was eventually found, and it was pulled from the ocean floor July 20, 1999. Without the hatch or the capsule, NASA had no way of knowing exactly what happened. The event was a cloud on Grissom’s career. Eventually, NASA called for a redesign of spacecraft hatches to prevent the same sort of thing from happening. The hatches became much more difficult to open. Ironically, that feature, added after Grissom’s Mercury flight, became an issue at the end of his career. He was selected to fly the Gemini 3 mission that flew on March 23, 1965. That made Gus Grissom the first American to fly into space twice. Playing off of the sinking of the Liberty Bell 7, Grissom named the Gemini 3 capsule the Molly Brown (after a well known Broadway show called “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”). He remained in the astronaut corps, and eventually was selected to be among the first astronauts to fly a test mission of the Apollo spacecraft. He never got the chance to fly into space again, though, after his Gemini misison. During a full fledged mission drill aboard the capsule while it was sitting on the launch pad, a fire broke out in the capsule. The capsule had been filled with pure oxygen during the drill mission, and the fire grew rapidly out of control, consuming the entire capsule and killing all three crew members. Gus Grissom, along with crew mates Roger Chafee and Ed White, died in the fire on January 27, 1967. The redesigned spacecraft hatch, implemented as a result of the Liberty Bell 7 accident, proved slow and difficult to open, preventing any hope of escape. The fire had spread so rapidly in the pure oxygen environment of the capsule that a quick opening hatch may not have saved the astronauts, but the redesigned hatch most definitely prevented any hope of rescue. The hatch was again redesigned to permit a more rapid escape in the event of an emergency.
John Glenn was the third American in space, and the first one to orbit the Earth. On February 20, 1962, Glenn lifted off aboard Friendship 7 for a mission that lasted nearly five hours. Unlike the first two Mercury flights, Glenn’s mission used the new Atlas Rocket rather than the smaller Redstone Rocket. The more powerful Atlas was able to lift the Mercury capsule into orbit. There was some concern that the heat shield on his spacecraft may have been loose, but that turned out not to be the case (there as a faulty indicator). He splashed down safely into the Atlantic Ocean, though some distance from the planned target zone. As the first American to orbit the Earth, Glenn was hailed as an American hero. In 1964, Glenn resigned from NASA in order to enter politics in his home state of Ohio. He eventually was elected to the United States Senate, representing Ohio. At age 77, though, Glenn again flew into space, this time as a civilian Payload Specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-95 mission. Glenn’s role aboard the mission was to study the effect of weightlessness on the elderly on the nine day flight.
Scott Carpenter flew into space on May 24, 1962, aboard the Aurora 7 capsule on the second manned orbital Mercury mission. Originally, Deke Slayton had been scheduled to be the fourth American into space, but Carpenter was named as the primary crew for the mission after Slayton was diagnosed with a cardiac arrhythmia. Carpenter’s mission also lasted nearly five hours, like Glenn’s mission. During the flight, he performed several experiments and discovered that ice crystals forming on the sides of the capsule and then being dislodged were the cause of mysterious glowing “fireflies” surrounding the capsule that John Glenn had observed. Carpenter was also the first astronaut to eat in space, demonstrating that humans can eat in the weightless environment of spaceflight. A mishap on reentry caused the Aurora 7 to land over 400 kilometers off target. Carpenter took a leave of absence from NASA to train for the Navy’s Sealab program. Soon afterwards, he was in a motorcycle accident that injured his arm severely enough to be permanently grounded. He never flew into space again. Carpenter and Glenn remain as the only two of the original seven Mercury astronauts to still be alive.
Wally Shirra was the fifth American to fly into space. On October 2, 1962, Shirra lifted off for a mission lasting over nine hours aboard the Sigma 7 capsule. His mission was textbook smooth. The goal of the flight was engineering experiments. His mission was the highest flying of the Mercury missions, having an apogee of 283 kilometers (176 miles). His capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on target. Shirra went on to fly on two more missions, Gemini VI-A and Apollo 7, making him the only one of the first seven astronauts to fly a mission in each of the first three American space programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Shirra’s Gemini VI-A mission was originally going to be a mission to rendezvous with an unmanned Agena target vehicle. The failure of the target vehicle in October, 1965, at first resulted in a cancellation of the Gemini VI mission. However, NASA decided to instead launch Gemini VI in a new mission, Gemini VI-A, to rendezvous with the Gemini VII mission. On December 15, a powerful Titan rocket lifted Wally Shirra and Thomas Stafford aloft in their Gemini VI-A capsule to match orbits with the Gemini VII spacecraft holding Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. After station keeping with Gemini VII, the Gemini VI capsule returned to Earth, having spent only about a day in orbit. Shirra’s final flight was an 11 day mission aboard an Apollo capsule lofted into Earth orbit by a Saturn 1-B rocket on October 11, 1968, as the first manned flight test of the Apollo program capsule. Shirra died on May 3, 2007.
Gordo Cooper closed out the Mercury missions with the Mercury-Atlas 9 mission that lifted off May 15, 1963, for a 34 hour 19 minute 49 second mission aboard the Faith 7 capsule. This was the longest of the Mercury missions, and Cooper was the first American to spend more than one day in orbit. Cooper’s flight went well, though not as perfectly as Schirra’s. Controversy arose from his claims of being able to see roads and houses from orbit, a feat not optically possible for the human eye. Cooper was the last American to fly solo in space. No further Mercury missions flew. Three other potential flights were canceled. Cooper did fly into space again, though, on August 21, 1965, aboard the Gemini V spacecraft along with Pete Conrad. That mission, lasting almost 8 days was one of the several Gemini missions that demonstrated that the human body could adapt to an extended period of weightlessness — a requirement for a manned mission to the Moon. Cooper was part of the backup crew for Apollo 10, but he was falling from favor in the eyes of NASA. He had expected to be assigned commander of Apollo 13 or perhaps 14, but that did not happen. He resigned from the Air Force and NASA on July 31, 1970. Gordo Cooper died October 4, 2004.
The final astronaut of the initial seven was Deke Slayton. After being grounded midway through the Mercury program due to a heart arrhythmia, he went on to serve as NASA’s Director of Flight Crew Operations, essentially head of the astronaut corps. Slayton never left the astronaut corps, and he kept working to regain his flight status. His persistence paid eventually off. Slayton was finally able to regain medical certification for flight in 1972. However, this came far too late for him to fly on any Mercury or Gemini flights. The Apollo moon flights were curtailed, so he did not have an opportunity to fly to the Moon, either. He was even too late to be assigned to the Skylab program. However, he was selected to fly the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in which an Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft rendezvoused in orbit, both docking to an airlock allowing crew members from both spacecraft to shake hands in space. This mission, lasting from July 15 to 24, 1975, was the last American space mission until the Space Shuttle Columbia flew into space on April 12, 1981. Deke Slayton died June 13, 1993.
These seven men were our first astronauts. Eventually, at least one of them flew on every one of America’s space programs.
-Astroprof
Image courtesy NASA
Ed Davies on April 10, 2009 at 8:32 am: 1
“Originally, Deke Slayton had been scheduled to be the fourth American into space, but Carpenter was named as the primary crew for the mission after Slayton was diagnosed with a cardiac arrhythmia.”
This is strictly correct in that Slayton was pulled from the flight at a later date than he was diagnosed with the fibrillation but misleading in that the crew change was not a consequence of the _diagnosis_. His condition had been known about for a few years - the crew change resulted from the realisation that it would have to be made public and that there would likely be fuss from the press about it.
See his (auto-)biography co-written with Michael Cassutt.
Astroprof on April 10, 2009 at 11:24 am: 2
Thanks for the clarification, Ed. I had been under the impression that Slayton had been pulled because of his medical condition. That has been inferred in several things that I’ve read, and I suppose that misinformation has been passed along from one source to another for years. So, I am glad to have been set straight.