Which mercury astronauts went to the moon

Donald "Deke" Slayton was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts — but he never flew in that program. Because of a heart condition, he was grounded for decades before being approved and flying in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint mission with the Soviet Union.

On his last flight, Gemini 5, Cooper and crewmate Pete Conrad set what was then a world endurance record of the time of hours 56 minutes. Named as one of NASA's "Original Seven" Mercury astronauts in , he remained an astronaut long enough to fly the first manned mission of the Apollo command module that eventually ferried crews to and from the moon. He also sat through a pad abort during the Gemini program. They got him to cough, burp, say ahhhh , and stand on one foot.

They scrutinized a mark on his skin where a buckle had dug in , and paused to discuss a chigger bite. He was perfectly healthy. Spaceflight was in fact safe.

After an experimental surgery fixed his ear problem in , Shepard was raring to go to the moon. He used his influence to butt in line ahead of other astronauts awaiting flight assignments, and grabbed one for himself.

When Apollo 14 launched, he had spent just five minutes in space, and crewmates Ed Mitchell and Stu Roosa had never flown. At 47, he was also the oldest Apollo commander by several years.

Before that decade was out, a new stereotype of the astronaut would replace the old boy scout image from Mercury days, and Shepard was its perfect embodiment—the Corvette-racing guy who hit a golf ball on the moon.

Carpenter took a leave from the astronaut corps in before leaving NASA entirely in Max Faget who designed the Mercury capsule called Carpenter a better poet than astronaut. Last year I met former mission control technicians Jerry Bostick and Glynn Lunney, and asked them about the stories of NASA writing mission rules mid-way through flights because they were all learning as they went.

The other Mercury astronauts, too, with the exception of Glenn, sided with more with Kraft than with Carpenter. Wally Schirra, next in line to fly, made it his personal goal to prove that an astronaut could be more of a help than a liability in space. He named his spacecraft Sigma 7 to reflect his goal of engineering perfection, and on October 3, , he drifted in space for the bulk of his six orbits and landed incredibly close to his splashdown target point with plenty of fuel to spare.

On one hand were the technicians in Mission Control monitoring every aspect of a flight in real time, plotting reentry paths and keeping tabs on when and where they could bring the spacecraft home safely if an emergency arose.

On the other hand were the astronauts, all experienced fighter pilots used to testing new aircraft in adverse conditions and accustomed to make life-saving decisions in a split second. The orbiting astronaut wanted to be in command of his mission, but so did the Flight Director. His focus on in-flight experiments left him at odds with Kraft. Unfortunately for Carpenter, Mercury was not a program for starry eyed astronauts.

He died on October 10, , at 88 years old. The quasar J is 13 billion light-years away from Earth. But it still can reveal a lot about our own universe. Collisions between the Parker Solar Probe and dust are so energetic the particles burst into plasma. Sign up to receive Popular Science's emails and get the highlights. Like science, tech, and DIY projects?

Over the course of 10 missions, astronauts changed orbits, rendezvoused with other spacecraft, docked with an unmanned Agena rocket , and walked and spent long periods of time in space. Upon completion of the Gemini program, NASA learned how to fly, live and work in space for the durations of around two weeks that were necessary to send men to the moon and back [source: Garber and Launius ].

Apollo's primary mission was to land men on the moon , explore it and return them safely to Earth. The Apollo spacecraft carried three men and consisted of a command module crew quarters , service module rocket motor, fuel cells, fuel tank, maneuvering rockets, science packages and life support , and a lunar module a two-man, two-stage independent space vehicle for landing and lifting off from the lunar surface.

The Apollo 1 mission ended with a tragic fire on the launchpad that claimed the lives of three astronauts, Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. The Apollo spacecraft was redesigned and tested in Earth orbit during Apollo 7.

Apollo 8 took astronauts into lunar orbit, then Apollo missions 9 and 10 tested the lunar module in earth orbit and lunar orbit, respectively.