THE MERCURY SEVEN

NAMED ON APRIL 9 , 1959

Note the Painted Work Boots

According to Wikipedia, "The Mercury Seven were the group of seven Mercury astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959. They are also referred to as the Original Seven or Astronaut Group 1. They piloted the manned spaceflights of the Mercury program from May 1961 to May 1963. These seven original American astronauts were Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper, and Deke Slayton.

Members of the group flew on all classes of NASA manned orbital spacecraft of the 20th century—Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. Of the seven, only John Glenn, who was the oldest, is still living; he went on to become a U.S. senator. Gus Grissom died in 1967, in the Apollo 1 fire. The others all survived past retirement from service

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (1923–1998), U.S. Navy (2 flights)
MR-3 (Freedom 7) – May 1961 – First manned Mercury flight; Shepard became the first American in space
Apollo 14 – January 1971 – Commander – Third manned lunar landing; fifth man to walk on the Moon

Virgil Ivan (Gus) Grissom (1926–1967), U.S. Air Force (2 flights)
MR-4 (Liberty Bell 7) – July 1961 – Final suborbital Mercury flight; Liberty Bell 7 sank after splashdown and was not retrieved until 1999
Gemini 3 – March 1965 – Command Pilot – First manned Gemini mission, first manned mission to change orbital plane; Grissom became the first person to be launched into space twice
Apollo 1 – January 1967 – Commander – Killed in a fire during a launch pad test one month before the launch

John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (b. 1921), U.S. Marine Corps (2 flights)
MA-6 (Friendship 7) – February 1962 – First orbital Mercury flight; Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth
STS-95 Discovery – October 1998 – Payload Specialist – Spacelab mission, Spartan 201 release; Glenn became the oldest person in space

Malcolm Scott Carpenter (1925–2013), U.S. Navy (1 flight)
MA-7 (Aurora 7) – May 1962 – Second orbital Mercury mission

Walter Marty (Wally) Schirra, Jr. (1923–2007), U.S. Navy (3 flights)
MA-8 (Sigma 7) – October 1962 – Third orbital Mercury flight
Gemini 6A - December 1965 – Command Pilot – First rendezvous in space, with Gemini 7
Apollo 7 - October 1968 – Commander – First manned Apollo mission; Schirra became the first person to be launched into space three times and the only person to fly Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions

Leroy Gordon (Gordo) Cooper, Jr. (1927–2004), U.S. Air Force (2 flights)
MA-9 (Faith 7) – May 1963 – Final Mercury mission, first American mission to last more than a day
Gemini 5 - August 1965 – Command Pilot – First eight-day space mission, first use of fuel cells

Donald Kent (Deke) Slayton (1924–1993), U.S. Air Force (1 flight)
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project – July 1975 – Docking Module Pilot – First joint American–Soviet space mission, first docking of an American and Russian spacecraft.