space flights 2030

Project Mercury

Project Mercury, the first U.S. program to put humans in space, made 25 flights, six of which carried astronauts between 1961 and 1963. The objectives of the program were: to orbit a human spacecraft around Earth, to investigate a person’s ability to function in space, and to recover both the astronaut and spacecraft safely. More than 2 million people from government agencies and the aerospace industry combined their skills, initiative and experience to make the project possible. Mercury showed that humans could function for periods up to 34 hours of weightless flight.