Goals

Initiated in 1958, completed in 1963, Project Mercury was the United States' first man-in-space program. The objectives of the program, which made six manned flights from 1961 to 1963, were specific:

* To orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth;

* To investigate man's ability to function in space;

* To recover both man and spacecraft safely.

Space Craft

The first U.S. spaceship was a cone-shaped one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. Two meters (6 ft, 10 in) long, 1.9 meters (6 ft, 2 1/2 in) in diameter, a 5.8 meter (19 ft, 2 in) escape tower was fastened to the cylinder of the capsule. The blunt end was covered with an ablative heat shield to protect it against the 3000 degree heat of entry into the atmosphere. The Mercury program used two launch vehicles: A Redstone for the suborbital and an Atlas for the four orbital flights. Prior to the manned flights, unmanned tests of the booster and the capsule, carrying a chimpanzee, were made. Each astronaut named his capsule and added the numeral 7 to denote the teamwork of the original astronauts.

Types of Rockets

Redstone

Length	21 m
Mass	28,440 kg
Number of engines	1
Stages	1
Number of wings/fins/stabilizers	4

Atlas D

Length	25 m
Mass	117,730 kg
Number of engines	2 (stage 0) 1 (stage 1)
Stages	1
Number of wings/fins/stabilizers	0