Project Mercury: The First Americans in Space

Video from the channel SciShow Space about Project Mercury, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 4:07. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

An educational piece about Project Mercury, the first American crewed spaceflight program (1958-1963). It had three goals: to put a person into orbit, to study how the human body responds to space, and to bring the astronaut safely back with their craft.

It reviews the setbacks of the uncrewed missions. Little Joe 1 fired prematurely on August 21, 1959, due to a circuit crossover. Big Joe 1 validated the heat shield. In total there were twenty uncrewed flights and six crewed ones.

Alan Shepard was the first American in space with Mercury-Redstone 3 (May 1961). John Glenn was the first to orbit the Earth with Mercury-Atlas 6 (February 1962). Grissom and Carpenter repeated those flights; Grissom's capsule sank and was not recovered until 1999. With Gordon Cooper, Mercury-Atlas 9 spent almost 34 hours in orbit.