Who was the first American in space?
Alan Shepard
Rear Admiral Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961 he became the first American to travel into space, and in 1971 he walked on the Moon.
History of spaceflight
Project Gemini was NASA's second manned spaceflight program. The program ran from 1961 to 1966. The program pioneered the orbital maneuvers required for space rendezvous. Ed White became the first American to make an extravehicular activity (EVA, or "space walk"), on June 3, 1965, during Gemini 4. Gemini 6A and 7 accomplished the first space rendezvous on December 15, 1965. Gemini 8 achieved the first space docking with an unmanned Agena Target Vehicle on March 16, 1966. Gemini 8 was also the first US spacecraft to experience in-space critical failure endangering the lives of the crew.
Astronaut
The first civilian in space was Valentina Tereshkova aboard Vostok 6 (she also became the first woman in space on that mission).
Tereshkova was only honorarily inducted into the USSR's Air Force, which did not accept female pilots at that time. A month later, Joseph Albert Walker became the first American civilian in space when his X-15 Flight 90 crossed the line, qualifying him by the international definition of spaceflight. Walker had joined the US Army Air Force but was not a member during his flight. 
The first people in space who had never been a member of any country's armed forces were both Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov aboard Voskhod 1.
Project Mercury
On April 12, 1961 the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space on an orbital flight. Alan Shepard became the first American in space on a suborbital flight three weeks later, on May 5, 1961. John Glenn, the third Mercury astronaut to fly, became the first American to reach orbit on February 20, 1962, but only after the Soviets had launched a second cosmonaut, Gherman Titov, into a day-long flight in August 1961. Three more Mercury orbital flights were made, ending on May 16, 1963 with a day-long, 22 orbit flight. However, the Soviet Union ended its Vostok program the next month, with the human spaceflight endurance record set by the 82-orbit, almost 5-day Vostok 5 flight.
Space Adventures
Richard Garriott became the first American and second overall second-generation space traveler on following his astronaut father Owen Garriott into space in 2008. He is also the second person to wear the British flag in space. He launched for the International Space Station on October 12, 2008 aboard Soyuz TMA-13. Richard's main objective for his mission was to encourage commercial participation. By fostering the involvement of individuals, companies and organizations in his spaceflight, Richard hoped to demonstrate that there is commercial potential in private space exploration, while furthering the understanding of space. One of his crewmates on his return journey to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-12 was Sergey Volkov, the first second-generation space traveler, who followed his father, cosmonaut Aleksandr Volkov into space.
Joseph A. Walker
Joseph Albert Walker (February 20, 1921 – June 8, 1966) flew the world's first two spaceplane flights in 1963 (according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale's (FAI) definition of the space border), thereby becoming the United States' seventh man in space. Walker was a Captain in the United States Air Force, an American World War II pilot, an experimental physicist, a NASA test pilot, and a member of the U.S. Air Force Man In Space Soonest spaceflight program. His two X-15 experimental rocket aircraft flights in 1963 that exceeded the Kármán line – the altitude of 100 kilometers (62.14 miles), considered by the FAI to mark the threshold of outer space – qualified him as an astronaut under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the FAI.
Norman Thagard
Norman Earl Thagard (born July 3, 1943), (Capt, USMC, Ret.), is an American scientist and former U.S. Marine Corps officer and naval aviator and NASA astronaut. He is the first American to ride to space on board a Russian vehicle, and can be considered the first American cosmonaut. He did on this on March 14, 1995, in the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft for the Russian Mir-18 mission.
List of spacewalks and moonwalks 1965–1999
The first spacewalk, that of the Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov was commemorated in several Eastern Bloc stamps (see the stamps section in the Alexey Leonov article). Since the Soviet Union did not distribute diagrams or images of the Voskhod 2 spacecraft at the time, the spaceship depiction in the stamps was purely fictional. In 1967 the U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp commemorating the first American to float freely in space while orbiting the Earth. The engraved image has accurate depiction of the Gemini IV spacecraft and the space suit worn by astronaut Ed White.
Irene D. Long
Irene Duhart Long (born November 16, 1951) is an American physician and was an official at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She was the first female chief medical officer at the Kennedy Space Center.
William Anders
William Alison Anders (born October 17, 1933), is a retired United States Air Force Major general, former electrical engineer, nuclear engineer, NASA astronaut, and businessman. He is known for being one of the first three persons to leave low Earth orbit and travel to the Moon in Apollo 8 along with fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell as well as for photographing the iconic image, "Earthrise". Apart from his professional and military careers, Anders was the U.S. Ambassador to Norway from 1976 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford.
Presidency of John F. Kennedy
Though Gallup polling showed that many in the public were skeptical of the necessity of the Apollo Program, members of Congress were strongly supportive in 1961, and they approved a major increase in NASA's funding. In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, and the following year Mariner program sent an unmanned flight past Venus. Though some members of Congress came to favor shifting NASA's budget to other programs, Kennedy and Johnson remained committed to the lunar landing. On July 20, 1969, two American astronauts landed on the Moon.
Tam O'Shaughnessy
O’Shaughnessy was the romantic partner of astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, from 1985 until Ride's death in 2012. O’Shaughnessy and Ride also were business partners in Sally Ride Science, and they wrote children's science books together.
Alan Shepard
A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard saw action with the surface navy during World War II. He became a naval aviator in 1946, and a test pilot in 1950. He was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made the first manned Project Mercury flight, MR-3, in a spacecraft he named "Freedom 7". His craft entered space, but was not capable of achieving orbit. He became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space, and the first space traveler to manually control the orientation of his craft. In the final stages of Project Mercury, Shepard was scheduled to pilot the Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10), which was planned as a three-day mission. He named Mercury Spacecraft 15B "Freedom 7 II" in honor of his first spacecraft, but the mission was canceled.
Mitchell, Indiana
Mitchell was also the birthplace of astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom (1926–1967). A mechanical engineering graduate of Purdue University, he joined the United States Air Force and was selected as a member of NASA's Project Mercury space program. Gus Grissom was the second American to fly in space on Liberty Bell 7 and also flew aboard Gemini 3. He died in a launch pad fire at Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a training exercise for Apollo 1 on January 27, 1967.
John Herrington
John Bennett Herrington (born September 14, 1958 in Chickasaw Nation) is a retired United States Naval Aviator and former NASA astronaut. In 2002, Herrington became the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space.
Neil Armstrong
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
Purdue University
Purdue has produced 23 astronauts, including Gus Grissom, America's second man in space and first to fly in NASA's Gemini program, Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the moon, and Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut to do so. Over one third of all of NASA's manned space missions have had at least one Purdue graduate as a crew member.
History of spaceflight
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female Shuttle pilot, and with Shuttle mission STS-93 in July 1999 she became the first woman to command a US spacecraft.
Paul J. Weitz
Paul Joseph Weitz (July 25, 1932 – October 22, 2017) was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut, who flew into space twice. He was a member of the three-man crew who flew on Skylab 2, the first manned Skylab mission. He was also Commander of the STS-6 mission, the first of the Space Shuttle "Challenger" flights.
Chris Hadfield
Chris Austin Hadfield (born August 29, 1959) is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot. The first Canadian to walk in space, Hadfield has flown two Space Shuttle missions and served as commander of the International Space Station.
Michael Collins (astronaut)
Michael Collins (born October 31, 1930) (major general, USAF) is an American former astronaut and test pilot. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew into space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two different spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). His second spaceflight was as the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 11. While he stayed in orbit around the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left in the lunar module to make the first manned landing on its surface. He is one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon. Collins was the seventeenth American in space, and the fourth person, and third American, to perform an EVA; and the first person to have performed more than one EVA.
Project Mercury
Shepard became the first American in space by making a suborbital flight in May 1961. He went on to fly in the Apollo program and became the only Mercury astronaut to walk on the Moon. Gus Grissom, who became the second American in space, also participated in the Gemini and Apollo programs, but died in January 1967 during a pre-launch test for Apollo 1. Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in February 1962, then quit NASA and went into politics, serving as a US Senator from 1974 to 1999, and returned to space in 1998 as a Payload Specialist aboard STS-95. Deke Slayton was grounded in 1962, but remained with NASA and was appointed Chief Astronaut at the beginning of Project Gemini. He remained in the position of senior astronaut, in charge of space crew flight assignments among many other responsibilities, until towards the end of Project Apollo, when he resigned and began training to fly on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, which he successfully did. Gordon Cooper became the last to fly in Mercury and made its longest flight, and also flew a Gemini mission. Carpenter's Mercury flight was his only trip into space. Schirra flew the third orbital Mercury mission, and then flew a Gemini mission. Three years later, he commanded the first manned Apollo mission, becoming the only person to fly in all three of those programs.
Ulf Merbold
Dr. Ulf Dietrich Merbold (born June 20, 1941) is the first West German citizen and second German native (after Sigmund Jähn) to have flown in space. He is also the first member of the European Space Agency Astronaut Corps to participate in a spaceflight mission and the first non-US citizen to reach orbit in a US spacecraft. In 1983, he and Byron Lichtenberg became the first Payload Specialists to fly on the shuttle.
Joseph A. Walker
Walker was the first American civilian to make any spaceflight, and the second civilian overall, preceded only by the Soviet Union's cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova one month earlier. Flights 90 and 91 made Walker the first human to make multiple spaceflights.
Mercury 13
Although both Cobb and Cochran made separate appeals for years afterward to restart a women's astronaut testing project, the U.S. civil space agency did not select any female astronaut candidates until Astronaut Group 8 in 1978, which selected astronauts for the operational Space Shuttle program. Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983 on STS-7, and Eileen Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle during STS-63 in 1995. Collins also became the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission during STS-93 in 1999. In 2005, she commanded NASA's return to flight mission, STS-114. At Collins' invitation, seven of the surviving Lovelace finalists attended her first launch, ten of the FLATs attended her first command mission, and she has flown mementos for almost all of them.
Astronaut
With the increase of seats on the Space Shuttle, the U.S. began taking international astronauts. In 1983, Ulf Merbold of West Germany became the first non-US citizen to fly in a US spacecraft. In 1984, Marc Garneau became the first of 8 Canadian astronauts to fly in space (through 2010).
In 1985, Rodolfo Neri Vela became the first Mexican-born person in space. In 1991, Helen Sharman became the first Briton to fly in space.
In 2002, Mark Shuttleworth became the first citizen of an African country to fly in space, as a paying spaceflight participant. In 2003, Ilan Ramon became the first Israeli to fly in space, although he died during a re-entry accident.
Jeffrey Williams (astronaut)
Jeffrey Nels Williams (born January 18, 1958) is a retired United States Army officer and a NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of four space flights and formerly held the American record for most days spent in space, which was surpassed in April 2017 by his colleague Peggy Whitson. He still holds the record of the longest time in space for an American man.
Tagore Baal Niketan Sr. Sec. School, Karnal
Dr. Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian American astronaut and first Indian born woman in space is perhaps Tagore Baal Niketan's most famous alumni. Born in Karnal, India in 1962, she completed her schooling from Tagore Baal Niketan in 1976. She was one of the 7 crew members aboard the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere over Texas in 2003 killing all crew members.Scholarships are awarded to the meritorious students and financial help is also provided to needy students. Merit certificates and prizes are awarded to the deserving students in various fields. Fee concession/scholarships are granted regularly for scholastic excellence and Co-Curricular activities.
Alan Shepard
Faced with intense competition from the other astronauts, particularly John Glenn, Shepard quit smoking and adopted Glenn's habit of taking a morning jog, although he did not go so far as to give up the cocktails or the philandering. On January 19, 1961, Robert R. Gilruth, the director of NASA's Space Task Group, informed the seven astronauts that Shepard had been chosen for the first American manned mission into space. Shepard later recalled Louise's response when he told her that she had her arms around the man who would be the first man in space: "Who let a Russian in here?" During training he flew 120 simulated flights. Although his flight was originally scheduled for April 26, 1960, it was postponed several times by unplanned preparatory work, initially to December 5, 1960, then mid-January 1961, March 6, 1961, April 25, 1961, May 2, 1961, and finally to May 5, 1961. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, and the first to orbit the Earth. It was another body blow to American pride. When Shepard heard the news he slammed his fist down on a table so hard a NASA public relation officer feared he might have broken it.
Jay Barbree
Jay Barbree (born November 26, 1933) is a correspondent for NBC News, focusing on space travel. Barbree is the only journalist to have covered every manned space mission in the United States, beginning with the first American in space, Alan Shepard aboard "Freedom 7" in 1961, continuing through to the last mission of the Space Shuttle, "Atlantis's" STS-135 mission in July 2011. Barbree has been present for all 135 space shuttle launches, and every manned launch for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras. In total, Barbree has been witness to 166 manned space launches.
Tecwyn Roberts
Roberts served as NASA’s first Flight Dynamics Officer with Project Mercury that put the first American into space. He later joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where he served as Director and Manager of the Goddard Space Flight Center’s global tracking and communications system supporting NASA's manned and unmanned low earth orbiting flight programs.
Roberts, alternately nicknamed "Tec" and "Tex", was born 10 October 1925 at Trefnant Bach cottage in Llanddaniel Fab, Anglesey, Wales. He received his early education at "Ysgol Parc y Bont", the small local primary school there. He left the school in 1938 after a successful Scholarship Examination and continued his studies at the Beaumaris Grammar School, from which he graduated in 1942. After leaving Beaumaris Grammar School, he began an engineering apprenticeship with the aero- and marine-engineering company Saunders-Roe at Fryars Bay, Llanfaes, Anglesey, some eight miles from Llanddaniel Fab.
NASA Astronaut Group 12
The group's informal nickname is an acronym for "George Abbey Final Fifteen". Of this group, Mae Jemison would become the first female African-American in space, while Michael Foale would fly aboard the Mir space station. At the time of the "Columbia" accident in 2003, William Readdy was Associate Administrator for Space Flight and Kenneth Bowersox was commanding the "Expedition 6" crew on the ISS. Chilton, after leaving NASA, became the first NASA astronaut to become a General in the U.S. Air Force (Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford, USAF, and VADM Richard Truly, USN were three-star officers) and was commander of U.S. Strategic Command from October 2007 until January 2011.
Scott E. Parazynski
Scott Edward Parazynski (born July 28, 1961 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is an American physician and a former NASA astronaut. A veteran of five Space Shuttle flights and seven spacewalks, Parazynski's latest mission was STS-120 in October, 2007 – highlighted by a dramatic, unplanned EVA to repair a live solar array. In May 2016 he was inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame. He retired from NASA in March 2009 to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities in the private sector, and he is currently the CEO of a technology start-up. He is the first person to have both flown in space and summited Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth.
Janice E. Voss
Janice Elaine Voss (October 8, 1956 – February 6, 2012) was an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew in space five times, jointly holding the record for American women. Voss died on February 6, 2012, from breast cancer.
William Carpentier
William Carpentier (born 1935/1936, Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian-American physician best known as the flight surgeon assigned to the United States' Apollo 11 mission, the first manned spacecraft to land on the Moon. In the months following the Apollo 11 mission, Carpentier became known as the "world famous physician". He later went into nuclear medicine research.
Marion Dietrich
While the women waited for the next phase of their program in July 1961, the testing was halted without warning or explanation. It would be two more decades before the United States launched its first woman into space, Sally Ride, an astrophysicist turned astronaut.
Apollo–Soyuz Test Project
The Apollo flew with a three-man crew on board: Tom Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton. Stafford had already flown into space three times, including within eight miles of the lunar surface as Commander of Apollo 10, and was the first general officer to fly into space. Slayton was one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts selected in 1959, but an irregular heartbeat grounded him until 1972. He became head of NASA's astronaut office and, after a lengthy medical program, selected himself for this mission. At the time, Slayton was the oldest person to fly in space and the one with the longest gap between selection as an astronaut and first flight into space. Brand, meanwhile, had trained with the Apollo spacecraft during his time as a backup Apollo 15 command module pilot, and had served two stints as a backup Skylab commander. The closest he had come to flying prior to ASTP was as commander for the Skylab Rescue mission mustered to potentially retrieve the crew of Skylab 3 due to a fuel leak on that mission's Apollo CSM.
William F. House
One of his patients was astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., first American and the second person in space in 1961, and, thanks to Dr. House, 5th man to walk on the Moon in 1971 following a procedure he performed on him for Meniere's disease.
STS-135
In a video celebrating the centennial of naval aviation, Commander Ferguson and Pilot Hurley also paid tribute to U.S. naval aviators. Among many those who have made significant contributions to the manned U.S. space program, Hurley mentioned several names such as Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in space; John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth; Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, the first and last humans to set foot on the moon; John Young and Robert Crippen, the first pilots of the Space Shuttle; and Ferguson and Hurley, the commander and the pilot of the current (last) shuttle flight.
Alan Shepard
On May 5, 1961, Shepard piloted the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission and became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space. He named his spacecraft, Mercury Spacecraft 7, "Freedom 7". It was launched atop a Redstone rocket. According to Gene Kranz in his book "Failure Is Not an Option", "When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, 'The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.'".
Women in space
The United States did not have a woman in space until 1983, when astronaut Sally Ride launched with the seventh Space Shuttle mission. Since then more than 40 American women have entered space. Most served on the various Space Shuttle flights from 1983 to 2011.
Alan Bean
Alan LaVern Bean (March 15, 1932 – May 26, 2018) was an American naval officer and naval aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut; he was the fourth person to walk on the Moon. He was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3.
Eugene H. Trinh
Eugene Huu-Chau "Gene" Trinh (Vietnamese: Trịnh Hữu Châu, born September 14, 1950) is a Vietnamese American biochemist who flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 as a Payload Specialist, becoming the first Vietnamese American astronaut in space.
Charles D. Walker
Charles David "Charlie" Walker (born August 29, 1948) is an American engineer who flew on three Space Shuttle missions in 1984 and 1985 as a Payload Specialist for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. He is the first non-government individual to fly in space.
Stephanie Wilson
Stephanie Diana Wilson (born September 27, 1966) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison. Her 42 days in space are the most of any African American astronaut, male or female.
C. Alfred &quot;Chief&quot; Anderson
In addition to hundreds of other notable awards received through his life, on October 4, 2013, Anderson was Enshrined into the National Aviation Hall. This honor is the most prestigious award an aviator can receive in America. Anderson entered into the Hall of Fame with fellow class of 2013 Enshrinees: Vietnam War hero Major General Patrick Henry Brady, famed NASA astronaut Captain Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson, and Cessna aircraft innovator Dwane L. Wallace. Christina Anderson accepted the award on behalf of Chief Anderson with award presenter Dr. Guion Stewart “Guy” Bluford, Jr., NASA astronaut and the first African American in space.
Cold War (1953–1962)
The Soviet Union continued to extend their lead in the space race with their mission on April 12, 1961 which made soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first human being to leave Earth's atmosphere and enter space. The United States gained some ground a month later, on May 15, 1961, when they sent Alan Shepard on a fifteen-minute flight outside of Earth's atmosphere during the Freedom 7 project. On February 20, 1962, America made further progress as John Glenn became the first American to orbit around all of Earth in one of their Mercury programs, Friendship 7.
Charles D. Gemar
Charles Donald "Sam" Gemar (born August 4, 1955) is an American former astronaut with NASA and a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. Gemar has flown on three Space Shuttle missions (STS-38, STS-48 and STS-62). Gemar has completed 385 orbits of the Earth and over 581 hours in space. He has also served in different positions in NASA, including as a CAPCOM for Shuttle missions. Gemar was the first astronaut to be born in the state of South Dakota.
Michael J. Adams
Michael James "Mike" Adams (May 5, 1930 – November 15, 1967), (Maj, USAF), was an American aviator, aeronautical engineer, and USAF astronaut. He was the first American space mission fatality, according to the United States definition.
Christopher C. Kraft Jr.
Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. (born February 28, 1924) is an American aerospace engineer and retired NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control operation. Following his graduation from Virginia Tech in 1944, Kraft was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor organization to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He worked for over a decade in aeronautical research before being asked in 1958 to join the Space Task Group, a small team entrusted with the responsibility of putting America's first man in space. Assigned to the flight operations division, Kraft became NASA's first flight director. He was on duty during such historic missions as America's first manned spaceflight, first manned orbital flight, and first spacewalk.
List of United States Marine Corps astronauts
"Project Mercury" (1959–1963) was the first human spaceflight program of the United States. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth. The Mercury-Atlas 6 flight on February 20, 1962, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, was the first Mercury flight to achieve this goal. Glenn was the only Marine to fly in the Mercury program, and also flew aboard the Space Shuttle "Discovery" in 1998. USAF astronaut Gordon Cooper was a former Marine, having previously served as an enlisted Infantryman before receiving his Air Force commission.
Human spaceflight
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female shuttle pilot, and with shuttle mission STS-93 in 1999 she became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft.
Space Race
American Virgil "Gus" Grissom repeated Shepard's suborbital flight in "Liberty Bell 7" on July 21, 1961. Almost a year after the Soviet Union put a human into orbit, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, on February 20, 1962. His Mercury-Atlas 6 mission completed three orbits in the "Friendship 7" spacecraft, and splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, after a tense reentry, due to what falsely appeared from the telemetry data to be a loose heat-shield. As the first American in orbit, Glenn became a national hero, and received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, reminiscent of that given for Charles Lindbergh. On February 23, 1962, President Kennedy escorted him in a parade at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where he awarded Glenn with the NASA service medal.
Jerry L. Ross
Jerry Lynn Ross (born January 20, 1948, Crown Point, Indiana) is a retired United States Air Force officer and a former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of seven Space Shuttle missions, making him the joint record holder for most spaceflights (a record he shares with Franklin Chang-Diaz). His papers, photographs and many personal items are in the Barron Hilton Flight and Space Exploration Archives at Purdue University. He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame during ceremonies in May 2014.
Ed White (astronaut)
Edward Higgins White II (November 14, 1930 – January 27, 1967), (Lt Col, USAF), was an American aeronautical engineer, U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. On June 3, 1965, he became the first American to walk in space. White died along with astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger B. Chaffee during prelaunch testing for the first manned Apollo mission at Cape Canaveral. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his flight in Gemini 4 and was then awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously.
Kathryn D. Sullivan
Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan (born October 3, 1951) is an American geologist and a former NASA astronaut. A crew member on three Space Shuttle missions, she was the first American woman to walk in space on October 11, 1984. She was Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2014. Sullivan's tenure ended on January 20, 2017 with the swearing in of President Donald Trump. Following completion of her service at NOAA, she was designated as the 2017 Charles A. Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum., and has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
Sally Ride
Prior to her first space flight, she was subject to media attention due to her gender. During a press conference, she was asked questions such as, "Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?" and "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?" Despite this and the historical significance of the mission, Ride insisted that she saw herself in only one way—as an astronaut. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space as a crew member on space shuttle "Challenger" for STS-7. She was preceded by two Soviet women, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. The five-person crew of the STS-7 mission deployed two communications satellites and conducted pharmaceutical experiments. Ride was the first woman to use the robot arm in space and the first to use the arm to retrieve a satellite.
The Right Stuff (film)
Shepard is the first American to reach space on the 15-minute sub-orbital flight of Mercury-Redstone 3 on May 5. After Grissom's similar flight of Mercury-Redstone 4 on July 21, the capsule's hatch blows open and quickly fills with water. Grissom escapes, but the spacecraft, overweight with seawater, sinks. Many criticize Grissom for possibly panicking and opening the hatch prematurely. Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth on Mercury-Atlas 6 on February 20, 1962, surviving a possibly loose heat shield, and receives a ticker-tape parade. He, his colleagues, and their families become celebrities, including a gigantic celebration in the Sam Houston Coliseum to announce the opening of the Manned Space Center in Houston, despite Glenn's wife Annie's fear of public speaking due to a stutter.
Dennis Tito
Dennis Anthony Tito (born August 8, 1940) is an American engineer and multimillionaire, most widely known as the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space. In mid-2001, he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visiting mission to the International Space Station. This mission was launched by the spacecraft Soyuz TM-32, and was landed by Soyuz TM-31.
Space research
On April 12, 1961, Russian Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit Earth in Vostok 1. In 1961, US astronaut Alan Shepard was the first American in space. And on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first human on the Moon.
On April 19, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the Salyut 1, which was the first space station of any kind. On May 14, 1973, Skylab, the first American space station was launched using a modified Saturn V rocket.
National Math and Science Initiative
Bernard Harris, Jr., MD,
Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Vesalius Ventures;
President and Founder, The Harris Foundation, Inc.;
Former NASA astronaut, first African-American to walk in space
Sally Ride
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut, physicist, and engineer. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. Ride was the third woman in space overall, after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the Orbiter "Challenger", she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control, then at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics, primarily researching nonlinear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the "Challenger" and "Columbia" space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate in both. Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012.
Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003) was an American astronaut, engineer and the first female of Indian origin to go to space. She first flew on Space Shuttle "Columbia" in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster when the aircraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and several streets, universities and institutions have been named in her honor.
Christopher C. Kraft Jr.
The Gemini program represented a string of firsts for NASA—the first flight with two astronauts, the first rendezvous in space, the first spacewalk—and Kraft was on duty during many of these historic events. America's first spacewalk happened during the Gemini 4 mission; Kraft, at his console, found that he had to force himself to concentrate on his work, distracted by Ed White's "mesmerizing" descriptions of the Earth below. He could easily understand the euphoria that White felt at the spectacle, yet he also was mindful of the discipline required to keep the flight safe. White delayed his return to the capsule, and a communication problem prevented capsule communicator Gus Grissom from getting the crew to hear the order to terminate the spacewalk. When contact was finally re-established, Kraft expressed his frustration on his ground loop to Grissom:
Alan Shepard (disambiguation)
Alan Shepard (1923–1998) was the first American astronaut to travel into space.
ANSER
To support its growing work with the Air Force Space Command, in 1983 the company expanded its footprint by opening an office in Colorado Springs. By the time Dr. John Fabian (1991–1998) was named ANSER’s third president, the company had grown to over 400 staff members. Dr. Fabian was a former military pilot and astronaut who had served as a mission specialist on the space shuttles "Discovery" and "Challenger". On the Challenger mission in 1984 a crewmember was Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space. The company had already developed contacts with the Russian space program in the 1980s, and in 1992 established a satellite office in Moscow known as the Center for International Aerospace Coordination, making it the first U.S. defense firm to open such an office in Russia.
Astronaut
Coinage of the term "kosmonavt" has been credited to Soviet aeronautics pioneer Mikhail Tikhonravov (1900–1974). The first cosmonaut was Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin, also the first person in space. Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian factory worker, was the first woman in space, as well as the first civilian among the Soviet cosmonaut or NASA astronaut corps to make a spaceflight. On March 14, 1995, Norman Thagard became the first American to ride to space on board a Russian launch vehicle, and thus became the first "American cosmonaut".
Marcos Pontes
Marcos Cesar Pontes (born March 11, 1963) is a Brazilian Air Force pilot, engineer, AEB astronaut and author. He became the first South American and the first Lusophone to go into space when he launched into the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-8 on March 30, 2006. He is the only Brazilian to have completed the NASA astronaut training program, although he switched to training in Russia after NASA's Space Shuttle program encountered problems. He currently lives in Houston with his wife and two children. After Jair Bolsonaro's victory for President of Brazil, Pontes was officially nominated as Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, which he accepted days later.
History of spaceflight
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. Its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth on February 20, 1962 aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6.
Eileen Collins
Eileen Marie Collins (born November 19, 1956) is a retired NASA astronaut and a retired United States Air Force colonel. A former military instructor and test pilot, Collins was the first female pilot and first female commander of a Space Shuttle. She was awarded several medals for her work. Colonel Collins has logged 38 days 8 hours and 20 minutes in outer space. Collins retired on May 1, 2006, to pursue private interests, including service as a board member of USAA.
John Young (astronaut)
Joining NASA in 1962, Young was the first of the Astronaut Group 2 to fly in space, replacing Thomas P. Stafford as pilot of Gemini 3 when Alan Shepard, the original command pilot, was grounded due to Ménière's disease. Making the first manned flight of the Gemini spacecraft with Gus Grissom in 1965, Young scored another space first by smuggling a corned beef sandwich onto the spacecraft—a feat for which he was reprimanded. Some members of the US House of Representatives were not pleased about the stunt, claiming that Young cost tax payers millions of dollars by disrupting a scheduled test of space food during the flight.
United States Astronaut Hall of Fame
The third class was inducted in 1997 and consisted of the 24 additional Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab astronauts. Notable members of the class were Roger Chaffee, the third astronaut killed in the Apollo 1 fire and the only unflown astronaut in the Hall; Harrison Schmitt, the first scientist and next-to-last person to walk on the Moon; and Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 crewmembers not previously inducted.
Gordon Cooper
Cooper was launched into space on May 15, 1963, aboard the "Faith 7" spacecraft, for what turned out to be the last of the Project Mercury missions. Because MA-9 would orbit over nearly every part of the world from 33 degrees north to 33 degrees south, a total of 28 ships, 171 aircraft, and 18,000 servicemen were assigned to support the mission. He orbited the Earth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined—34 hours, 19 minutes and 49 seconds. Cooper achieved an altitude of at apogee. He was the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on the launch pad during a countdown.
Nichelle Nichols
The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle "Challenger" disaster on January 28, 1986. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the former NASA administrator and veteran of four shuttle missions, Frederick D. Gregory, former deputy administrator and a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator. An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, Nichols has served since the mid-1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Society, a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun.
Scouting in New Jersey
Notable Scout Walter Marty Schirra, Jr. (March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007) earned the rank of First Class in Troop 36 in Oradell, New Jersey. He was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. He was also the only person to fly in all of America's first three space programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo).
Space propaganda
For more information go to Yuri Gagarin.
Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. This was a monumental event not only in Soviet history but also world history. It was therefore only natural that a cult of personality developed around the man who was the first in space. His achievement made him and instant celebrity and international hero. The story of Yuri Gagarin made his hero status even more deserving. He was from a common background and was not a rich man. His wife recalled a story about a time they were thrown out of a house in Germany and had to live in a dugout of a garden for three years. Gagarin had a thirst for knowledge which inspired people to study hard. Also Gagarin was known to have a warm and charming personality with a wonderful sense of humor. As his popularity soared, it also became threatening. President Kennedy did not let Yuri Gagarin tour the United States because he was so popular. The end of his life was seen as such a tragedy that it only added to his popularity. Yuri Gagarin's story was told to millions of people throughout the world. Books, magazines, TV shows, movies have all been created to honor this man. Posters and stamps were issued with Yuri's face on it. April 12 is known as the Day of Space in Russia to commemorate Yuri Gagarin's flight.
Alvin Drew
Colonel Benjamin Alvin Drew (born November 5, 1962) is a United States Air Force officer and a NASA astronaut. He has been on two spaceflights; the first was the Space Shuttle mission STS-118 to the International Space Station, in August 2007. Drew's second spaceflight took place in March 2011 on STS-133, another mission to the International Space Station. STS-133 was Space Shuttle "Discovery"'s final mission. Drew took part in two spacewalks while docked to the station. Drew was the final African-American to fly on board a Space Shuttle, as the final two Space Shuttle missions, STS-134 and STS-135, had no African-American crew members. He also is currently the latest African-American Astronaut to fly in space.
List of aircraft carrier classes of the United States Navy
As the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission ended, recovered Commander Alan B. Shepard, the first American in space, on May 5, 1961. Another aircraft carrier , recovered the Apollo 11 astronauts after their splashdown. Apollo 11 was the first manned landing mission to the moon, and was composed of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
Charles Camarda
Charles Joseph "Charlie" Camarda (born May 8, 1952 in Queens, New York) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut who flew his first mission into space on board the Space Shuttle mission STS-114. He served as Senior Advisor for Engineering Development at NASA Langley Research Center.
Space policy
The early history of United States space policy is linked to the US–Soviet Space Race of the 1960s. The National Aeronautics and Space Act creating NASA was passed in 1958, after the launch of the Soviet Sputnik 1 satellite. Thereafter, in response to the flight of Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space, Kennedy in 1961 committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Although the costs of the Vietnam War and the programs of the Great Society forced cuts to NASA's budget as early as 1965, the first Moon landing occurred in 1969, early in Richard Nixon's presidency. Under the Nixon administration NASA's budget continued to decline and three of the planned Apollo Moon landings were cancelled. The Nixon administration approved the beginning of the Space Shuttle program in 1972, but did not support funding of other projects such as a Mars landing, colonization of the Moon, or a permanent space station.
Edward Higgins White Sr.
White's son Edward H. White II graduated from West Point with the class of 1952, and later became an astronaut, and the first American to "walk" in space. He died in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967. White's second son, Major James B. White, was a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He was killed when his F-105 Thunderchief crashed in Laos in 1969.
Gus Grissom
Grissom was backup command pilot for Gemini 6A when he was transferred to the Apollo program and was assigned as commander of the first manned mission, AS-204, with Senior Pilot Ed White, who had flown in space on the Gemini 4 mission when he became the first American to make a spacewalk, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. The three men were granted permission to refer to their flight as "Apollo 1" on their mission insignia patch.
Women in space
Sally Ride was the third woman overall to go into space, launching on the Space Shuttle. Ride served on the STS-7 from June 18 to 24 in 1983. Judith Resnik was the second American woman in space, after Sally Ride, and the fourth woman overall in space, as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of "Discovery", from August to September 1984, dying less than a year and a half later when the Space Shuttle "Challenger" was destroyed. The first U.S. woman to go on an EVA was Kathryn ("Kathy") Sullivan on the STS-41-G, which launched on October 11, 1984. The first woman to be on an ISS expedition crew was Susan Helms on Expedition 2, which lasted from March 2001 until August 2001. United States NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins became the 60th woman to fly in space when she launched to the International Space Station on July 6, 2016, serving as a flight engineer on Expedition 48 and Expedition 49. She returned in October 2016, having spent 12 hours and 46 minutes on EVA and 115 days in space and 12 hours and 46 minutes in space as part of these missions. During her stay on ISS she also conducted numerous experiments including some in the area of biology. She was the first woman, and the first person, to sequence DNA in space.
White House Astronomy Night
In addition the Obama family, in attendance at the event was NASA astronaut Sally Ride, the first female American to travel to space in 1983. Ride wore her flight jacket and answered questions from children about the Solar System.
Amateur astronomers Caroline Moore and Lucas Bolyard attended the event. Both Moore and Bolyard had previously made noteworthy discoveries in astronomy. New York high school student Moore contributed to the discovery of Supernova 2008ha in 2008, becoming the youngest individual to identify a supernova.
Karol J. Bobko
Karol Joseph "Bo" Bobko (born December 23, 1937), (Col, USAF, Ret.), is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and a former USAF and NASA astronaut. Bobko was the first graduate of the US Air Force Academy to travel in space.
Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.
Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. (October 2, 1935 – December 8, 1967), (Major, USAF), was a United States Air Force officer and the first African-American astronaut.
List of space travelers by name
From the Department of Defense, eight USAF and NASA pilots qualified for the Astronaut Badge by flying the sub-orbital X-15 rocket spaceplane. One of these, Joseph A. Walker, flew the X-15 above 100 km on two flights, becoming the first person to enter space twice. However, the other pilots did not reach the 100 km FAI limit.
Patricia S. Cowings
Patricia S. Cowings (born 1948) is an aerospace psychophysiologist, and was the first African American woman scientist to be trained as an astronaut by NASA (though Sally Ride was the first American woman to fly in space). Although she was an alternate for a space flight in 1979 she did not travel to space. She is most well known for her studies in the physiology of astronauts in outer space, as well as helping find cures for astronaut's motion sickness.
Presidency of John F. Kennedy
In the aftermath of the Soviet launch of "Sputnik 1", the first artificial Earth satellite, NASA had proposed a manned lunar landing by the early 1970s. Funding for the manned program, known as the Apollo program, was far from certain as Eisenhower held an ambivalent attitude on manned spaceflight. Early in his presidency, Kennedy was poised to dismantle the manned space program, but he postponed any decision out of deference to Johnson, who had been a strong supporter of the space program in the Senate. Along with Jerome Wiesner, Johnson was given a major role in overseeing the administration's space policy, and at Johnson's recommendation Kennedy appointed James E. Webb to head NASA. In April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union. Less than a month later, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space, strengthening Kennedy's confidence in NASA.
Astronaut
On July 23, 1980, Pham Tuan of Vietnam became the first Asian in space when he flew aboard Soyuz 37. Also in 1980, Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez became the first person of Hispanic and black African descent to fly in space, and in 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African American to fly into space. In April 1985, Taylor Wang became the first ethnic Chinese person in space. The first person born in Africa to fly in space was Patrick Baudry (France), in 1985. In 1985, Saudi Arabian Prince Sultan Bin Salman Bin AbdulAziz Al-Saud became the first Arab Muslim astronaut in space. In 1988, Abdul Ahad Mohmand became the first Afghan to reach space, spending nine days aboard the Mir space station.
Museum of Aerospace Medicine
The museum was named after San Antonio native Ed White, an astronaut and the first American to "walk" in space.
Duane Graveline
Duane Edgar Graveline (March 2, 1931 – September 5, 2016) was an American physician and NASA astronaut. He was one of the six scientists selected in 1965, in NASA's fourth group of astronauts, for the Apollo program. He was best known for being immersed in water for seven days as part of his zero gravity deconditioning research while working as a United States Air Force (USAF) research scientist.
Katherine Johnson
Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those of astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo lunar lander and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film "Hidden Figures."
Arthur B. C. Walker Jr.
Walker mentored thirteen graduate students over his career at Stanford, and a majority of these students came from underrepresented groups in science. His first graduate student, Sally Ride, went on to become the first American woman in space.
Richard H. Truly
Richard Harrison Truly (born November 12, 1937) is a retired Vice Admiral in the United States Navy, a former fighter pilot, former astronaut for both the United States Air Force and NASA, and was the eighth Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 1989 to 1992. He was the first former astronaut to head the space agency.
Gus Grissom
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967) was one of the seven original National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Project Mercury astronauts, and the first of the Mercury Seven to die. He was also a Project Gemini and an Apollo program astronaut. Grissom was the second American to fly in space, and the first member of the NASA Astronaut Corps to fly in space twice. In addition, Grissom was a World War II and Korean War veteran, U.S. Air Force test pilot, and a mechanical engineer. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster, a two-time recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and, posthumously, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Guion Bluford
Guion Stewart Bluford Jr., Ph.D. (born November 22, 1942), (Col, USAF, Ret.), is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut, who was the first African American in space (but not the first African American astronaut). Before becoming an astronaut, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he remained while assigned to NASA, rising to the rank of Colonel. He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992. In 1983, as a member of the crew of the Orbiter "Challenger" on the mission STS-8, he became the first African American in space as well as the second person of African ancestry in space, after Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez.
Asian Americans in science and technology
LTC Ellison Onizuka became the first Asian American (and third person of East Asian descent) when he made his first space flight aboard STS-51-C in 1985. Onizuka later died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. Taylor Gun-Jin Wang became the first person of Chinese ethnicity and first Chinese American, in space in 1985; he has since been followed by Leroy Chiao in 1994, and Ed Lu in 1997. In 1986, Franklin Chang-Diaz became the first Asian Latin American in space. Eugene H. Trinh became the first Vietnamese American in space in 1992. In 2001, Mark L. Polansky, a Jewish Korean American, made his first of three flights into space. In 2003, Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian American in space, but died aboard the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia. She has since been followed by CDR Sunita Williams in 2006.
The Right Stuff (film)
In 1957, the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite alarms the United States government. Politicians such as Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and military leaders demand that NASA help America defeat the Russians in the new Space Race. The search for the first Americans in space excludes Yeager because he lacks a college degree. Grueling physical and mental tests select the Mercury Seven astronauts, including John Glenn of the United States Marine Corps, Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter of the United States Navy, as well as Cooper, Grissom and Slayton; they immediately become national heroes. Although many early NASA rockets explode during launch, the ambitious astronauts all hope to be the first in space as part of Project Mercury. Although engineers see the men as passengers, the pilots insist that the Mercury spacecraft have a window, a hatch with explosive bolts, and pitch-yaw-roll controls. However, Russia beats them into space on April 12, 1961 with the launch of Vostok 1 carrying Yuri Gagarin into space. The seven astronauts are determined to match and surpass the Russians.
NASA
When NASA was created that same year, the Air Force program was transferred to it and renamed "Project Mercury". The first seven astronauts were selected among candidates from the Navy, Air Force and Marine test pilot programs. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard "Freedom 7", launched by a Redstone booster on a 15-minute ballistic (suborbital) flight. John Glenn became the first American to be launched into orbit, by an Atlas launch vehicle on February 20, 1962, aboard "Friendship 7". Glenn completed three orbits, after which three more orbital flights were made, culminating in L. Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit flight "Faith 7", May 15–16, 1963.
USS Wasp (CV-18)
The carrier remained in port until 8 February 1965, and sailed for fleet exercises in the Caribbean. Operating along the Eastern Seaboard, she recovered the Gemini IV astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White and their spacecraft on 7 June after splashdown. Gemini IV was the mission of the first American to walk in space, Ed White. During the summer, the ship conducted search and rescue operations for an Air Force C-121 plane which had gone down off Nantucket. Following an orientation cruise for 12 congressmen on 20–21 August, "Wasp" participated in joint training exercises with German and French forces. From 16 to 18 December, the carrier recovered the astronauts of "Gemini VI-A", Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford and its sister craft, "Gemini VII", Frank Borman and Jim Lovell—the participants involved in the first-ever manned space rendezvous—after their respective splashdowns, and then returned to Boston on 22 December to finish out the year.