OrbitingTruths Archive
Search the missions that carried humanity from experimental capsules and orbital rendezvous to lunar landings and the next return to deep space.
Mercury
Freedom 7 made Alan Shepard the first American in space, a 15-minute suborbital flight that came just three weeks after the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit and helped set the stage for President Kennedy's challenge to land astronauts on the Moon.
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Showing 12 of 54 matching missions
Mercury
Freedom 7 made Alan Shepard the first American in space, a 15-minute suborbital flight that came just three weeks after the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit and helped set the stage for President Kennedy's challenge to land astronauts on the Moon.
Launch
May 5, 1961
Destination
Suborbital
Duration
15 minutes, 28 seconds
Crew
1 astronaut
Mercury
Liberty Bell 7 made Gus Grissom the second American in space on a suborbital flight nearly identical to Freedom 7, but the mission became famous for a dramatic near-disaster after splashdown when the capsule's hatch blew open prematurely and the spacecraft sank.
Launch
July 21, 1961
Destination
Suborbital
Duration
15 minutes, 37 seconds
Crew
1 astronaut
Mercury
Friendship 7 made John Glenn the first American to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in under five hours despite a tense reentry caused by a false sensor warning about the spacecraft's heat shield.
Launch
February 20, 1962
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds
Crew
1 astronaut
Mercury
Aurora 7 repeated John Glenn's three-orbit flight with Scott Carpenter at the controls, but a late and off-angle retrofire caused the capsule to splash down roughly 250 miles off target, leaving Carpenter adrift and out of contact for nearly forty minutes.
Launch
May 24, 1962
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
4 hours, 56 minutes, 5 seconds
Crew
1 astronaut
Mercury
Sigma 7 was a near-flawless six-orbit engineering test flight in which Wally Schirra deliberately conserved fuel and flew a highly disciplined mission, splashing down within a few miles of his target in the Pacific Ocean.
Launch
October 3, 1962
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
9 hours, 13 minutes, 11 seconds
Crew
1 astronaut
Mercury
Faith 7 was the longest and final flight of Project Mercury, sending Gordon Cooper on 22 orbits of Earth over more than 34 hours, during which he became the first American to sleep in space and executed a flawless manual reentry after a series of electrical failures.
Launch
May 15, 1963
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
34 hours, 19 minutes, 49 seconds
Crew
1 astronaut
Gemini
Gemini 3 was the first crewed flight of Project Gemini, carrying Gus Grissom and John Young on three orbits and demonstrating, for the first time, that a crewed spacecraft could actively change its own orbit.
Launch
March 23, 1965
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
4 hours, 52 minutes, 31 seconds
Crew
2 astronauts
Gemini
Gemini 4 sent James McDivitt and Ed White on a four-day flight remembered above all for White's spacewalk, the first time an American ventured outside a spacecraft in orbit.
Launch
June 3, 1965
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
4 days, 1 hour, 56 minutes
Crew
2 astronauts
Gemini
Gemini 5 set a new spaceflight endurance record of nearly eight days, proving astronauts could survive a mission as long as a round trip to the Moon, despite a fuel cell problem that threatened to cut the flight short.
Launch
August 21, 1965
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
7 days, 22 hours, 55 minutes
Crew
2 astronauts
Gemini
Gemini 7 sent Frank Borman and Jim Lovell on a grueling fourteen-day flight, the longest crewed spaceflight of its era, while also serving as the target for history's first space rendezvous with Gemini 6A.
Launch
December 4, 1965
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
13 days, 18 hours, 35 minutes
Crew
2 astronauts
Gemini
Gemini 6A achieved history's first rendezvous between two crewed spacecraft, closing to within a foot of Gemini 7 in orbit after its original Agena docking target was lost in a launch failure.
Launch
December 15, 1965
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
1 day, 1 hour, 51 minutes
Crew
2 astronauts
Gemini
Gemini 8 achieved the first docking between two spacecraft in orbit, but a stuck thruster sent the combined vehicles into a violent spin minutes later, forcing Neil Armstrong to abort the mission in one of the most dangerous emergencies of the space program.
Launch
March 16, 1966
Destination
Earth Orbit
Duration
10 hours, 41 minutes
Crew
2 astronauts
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The bigger story
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