On April 9, 1959, NASA launched its very first astronaut class. This dashing group of younger males is named the Mercury 7 astronauts.
They have been all military test pilots earlier than they have been chosen for the job, they usually had all “the right stuff” to tackle such dangerous missions. But in a manner, they basically grew to become guinea pigs for NASA’s new human spaceflight program, as a result of they did not get to do a lot piloting contained in the Mercury spacecraft.
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Some of the pilots weren’t too comfortable about this. But the remainder of the nation paid no consideration to that, and the Mercury 7 immediately grew to become nationwide heroes. In 1961, Alan Shepard grew to become the primary American to fly to space, adopted by Gus Grissom.
Then in 1962, John Glenn grew to become the primary American to orbit the Earth. After that, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper all accomplished orbital missions as properly. Deke Slayton, the one Mercury 7 astronaut to not fly a Mercury mission, later flew on the historic Apollo-Soyuz mission, the primary joint flight by two international locations: the United States and Soviet Union.
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