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Back Row - Shepard, Grissom, Cooper; Front Row - Schirra,
Slayton, Glenn, Carpenter.
This was the only time the seven astronauts would appear together
in pressure suits.
[1] Note
that Slayton and Glenn are wearing work boots that were
spray-painted.
(L to R) Cooper, Schirra, Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Slayton and
Carpenter
A chart showing Group 1 assignments in Mercury, Gemini and Apollo
in relation to assignments from subsequent astronaut groups.
The Mercury Seven was the group of seven Mercury astronauts picked by NASA on April 9, 1959. They are also
referred to as the Original Seven and
Astronaut Group 1. This was the only astronaut
group with members that flew on all classes of NASA manned
spacecraft of the 20th century: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and ending with John Glenn's flight on
the STS-95 Space Shuttle
mission.
In May 2009, the surviving members of the Mercury Seven were Glenn and Scott
Carpenter.
Selection
process
President Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted that
all candidates be test pilots with college degrees, although Glenn
was selected despite lacking the latter prerequisite; he dropped
out of college in 1941 to join the Army Air Corps. Because of the
small space inside the Mercury spacecraft, candidates could be no
taller than 5 feet 11 inches (180 cm) and weigh no more than 180
pounds (82 kg).[2]
NASA identified 69 candidates and brought them to Washington, DC
for extensive physical and mental exams. Six candidates were
rejected as too tall for the planned spacecraft. Another 33 failed
or dropped out during the first phase of exams. Four more refused
to take part in the second round of tests which included spending
hours on treadmills and
tilt
tables and submerging their feet in ice water. The second phase
of testing eliminated eight more candidates, leaving 18. From that
group of 18, the first seven NASA Astronauts were chosen.[3]
Despite the extensive medical evaluation, two of the seven (Shepard
and Slayton) were soon grounded for undiagnosed medical conditions
and sat out the entirety of Project Gemini and most of the Apollo
program (and Mercury as well, in Slayton's case) supervising the
active astronauts.
The astronauts wrote first-hand accounts of their selection and
preparation for the Mercury missions in the 1962 book We
Seven. Additionally, each of them separately wrote at least
one book describing their astronaut experiences. In 1979 Tom Wolfe published a less
sanitized version of their story in The
Right Stuff. Wolfe's book was the basis for the popular film directed by Philip
Kaufman.
Group
members
- MR-3
(Freedom 7), Apollo 14
- MR-4
(Liberty Bell 7), Gemini 3, Apollo 1
- MA-6
(Friendship 7), STS-95
- MA-7
(Aurora 7)
- MA-8
(Sigma 7), Gemini 6A, Apollo 7
- MA-9
(Faith 7), Gemini
5
- Apollo-Soyuz
Test Project
References
- ^
Slayton, Donald K.; Cassutt, Michael
(1994). Deke!. New York: Forge. pp. 87. ISBN
0312-85918-X.
- ^ Slayton, Donald K.; Alan Shepard, Jay
Barbree, Howard Beneduict (1994). Moon Shot: The Inside Story
of America's Race to the Moon. Turner
Publishing. ISBN
1-57036-167-3.
- ^ Carmichael, Mary (Nov-Dec 2007).
"Actually, It Is Rocket Science: NASA's Brilliant, Far-Out
History". Mental_Floss 6 (6):
42.
See also
| NASA Astronaut
Group 1, "The Mercury Seven", 1959 |
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