Project Mercury Timeline of Events

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Project Mercury

In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12, Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. was appointed to head the Mercury operations coordination group...

Timeline of Events

1958

10.7.1958

The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury.

1959

4.9.1959

Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

1960

1.21.1960

Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.

1961

1.31.1961

Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2

5.5.1961

Project Mercury|The Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 3

11.29.1961

Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission – Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

1962

5.24.1962

Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the ''Aurora 7'' space capsule.

10.3.1962

Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.

1963

5.15.1963

Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space.