Project 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.