About this Item
Sheet is approximately 8 inches by 10 inches. Black and white photographic image is approximately 9.5 inches by 5.5 inches. The top margin has the text "NASA Project Mercury Astronauts". The bottom margin has facsimile signatures of each of the astronauts. Internet research indicates that this photograph is of the 7 astronauts inspecting a model of the Mercury launch vehicle and capsule. This research indicates this photograph, a very famous one, often reproduced, was taken at the NASA Langley Research Center on April 30, 1959. Photograph has some edge wear and soiling but the image and signatures are clear and clean. This copy is not on photographic paper stock and bears no NASA identification number or other agency markings (other than the word NASA in the title). Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted twenty uncrewed developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights by astronauts. The program took its name from Roman mythology. The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot. The Mercury Seven were the group of seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1. Their names were publicly announced by NASA on April 9, 1959. These seven original American astronauts were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The Mercury Seven created a new profession in the United States, and established the image of the American astronaut for decades to come. All of the Mercury Seven eventually flew in space. They piloted the six spaceflights of the Mercury program that had an astronaut on board from May 1961 to May 1963, and members of the group flew on all of the NASA human spaceflight programs of the 20th century - Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. Shepard became the first American to enter space in 1961, and later walked on the Moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. Grissom flew Mercury and Gemini missions, but died in 1967 in the Apollo 1 fire; the others all survived past retirement from service. Schirra flew Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission, in Grissom's place. Slayton, grounded with an atrial fibrillation, ultimately flew on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Glenn became the first American in orbit in 1962, and flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 to become, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space. He was the last living member of the Mercury Seven when he died in 2016 at the age of 95.
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