Project Mercury was NASA's program that launched the first American astronauts into space, completing a total of six crewed spaceflights.

See amazing photos from Project Mercury, NASA's first manned spacecraft program in the early 1960s. Skip to main ... 1959. Project Mercury proved that humans could live and work in space, paving ...

Project Mercury was NASA’s very first human spaceflight program which operated from 1958 to 1963, having a total of 26—six crewed and 20 uncrewed—flights to space. While we lost the race to space when ...

Chimpanzee 65—later named Ham on his safe return from space, a strategy to avoid the chimps bonding too much with their handlers—is launched on Mercury-Redstone 2, January 31st, 1961.

During the early spaceflight program, NASA trained dozens of chimpanzees as part of Project Mercury, America’s mission to send humans to space.

A NASA Project Mercury spacecraft was launched on April 25, 1961 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a test designed to qualify the spacecraft and all systems, which must function during orbit and ...

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, making a brief suborbital mission that marked the first manned launch of Project Mercury. On the 50th anniversary of that mission ...

Many people in Hampton Roads have memories of Project Mercury and the space race, sparked by The Pilot's "The Bright Stuff" series. Below are some of their accounts, edited for space and clarity.