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, the first manned U.S. space project, became an official NASA program on October 7, 1958. The Mercury Program was given two main but broad objectives: 1. to investigate man’s ability to survive and perform in the space environment and 2. to develop basic sp ....

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.... Carpenter; Air Force Captains L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., Virgil “ Gus” Grissom, and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton; Marine Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr.; and Navy Lieutenant commanders Walter M. Schirra, Jr., and Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Of these, all flew in Project Mercury except Deke Slayton who was grounded for medical reasons. He later became an American crewmember of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The Mercury module was a bell shaped craft. Its base measured exactly 74.5 inches wide and it was nine feet tall. For its boosters NASA chose two U.S. military rockets: the Army’s Redstone, which provided 78,000 pounds of thrust, was used ....