Mercury Seven

Mercury Seven
The Mercury Seven in 1960 Back: Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper; Front: Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter[n 1]
Year selected	1959
Number selected	7
Astronaut Group 2 (1962) →

Part of a series on the
United States space program
NASA U.S. Space Force
Human spaceflight programs Mercury Gemini Apollo Skylab Space Shuttle Shuttle–Mir International Space Station Commercial Crew Constellation Artemis Lunar Gateway
Robotic spaceflight programs CRS Explorers GLS Large Strategic Lunar Orbiter Lunar Precursor Mariner Mars Exploration New Millennium Pioneer Planetary Missions Discovery New Frontiers Solar System Exploration Planetary Observer Ranger Surveyor Vanguard Viking Voyager X-37
NASA Astronaut Corps Mercury Gemini Apollo Space Shuttle
Spaceports Eastern Range Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Kennedy Space Center Wallops Flight Facility Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska Western Range Vandenberg Space Force Base
Space launch vehicles Alpha Antares Atlas V Electron Falcon 9 Falcon Heavy LauncherOne Minotaur I III IV V C New Glenn New Shepard Pegasus Space Launch System Starship Vulcan Centaur
National security space United States Space Force National Reconnaissance Office United States Space Command
Civil space Department of Energy national laboratories Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service Office of Space Commerce Space Weather Prediction Center Department of State Office of Space Affairs Office of Science and Technology Policy
Commercial space industry Astra Ball Aerospace Bigelow Aerospace Blue Origin Boeing Firefly Aerospace Lockheed Martin Raytheon Rocket Lab Northrop Grumman Sierra Nevada Corporation SpaceX SSL United Launch Alliance Virgin Galactic Virgin Orbit
v t e

The Mercury Seven were the group of seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1. Their names were publicly announced by NASA on April 9, 1959: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The Mercury Seven created a new profession in the United States, and established the image of the American astronaut for decades to come.

All of the Mercury Seven eventually flew in space. They piloted the six spaceflights of the Mercury program that had an astronaut on board from May 1961 to May 1963, and members of the group flew on all of the NASA human spaceflight programs of the 20th century – Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle.

Shepard became the first American to enter space in 1961, and walked on the Moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. Grissom flew the first crewed Gemini mission in 1965, but died in 1967 in the Apollo 1 fire; the others all survived past retirement from service. Schirra flew Apollo 7 in 1968, the first crewed Apollo mission, in Grissom's place, and became the only astronaut to fly Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Cooper piloted the last Mercury spaceflight, Mercury-Atlas 9, in 1963, and in 1965 became the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight when he flew as command pilot of Gemini 5. Carpenter flew Mercury-Atlas 7 in 1962. He later took leave of absence to join the U.S. Navy SEALAB project as an aquanaut, but in training suffered injuries that made him unavailable for further spaceflights.

Slayton, grounded with an atrial fibrillation, ultimately flew on the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975. The first American in orbit in 1962, Glenn flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 to become, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space at the time. He was the oldest member of the Mercury Seven, and the last living member of the group when he died in 2016 at age 95.

Cite error: There are <ref group=n> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=n}} template (see the help page).