Episode 40: The Mercury Seven


Mercury Seven

On April 9, 1959 NASA announced the first seven American astronauts.

Here are three things you might not know about Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Deke Slayton: ” The Mercury Seven”

One: All candidates for the Mercury program were test pilots. All were five-foot-11 or shorter and weighed 180 or fewer pounds.

Two: The astronauts signed a $500,000 deal with Life magazine for exclusive access to their private lives.

Three: Two of the Mercury Seven, Scott Carpenter and Deke Slayton made only one trip into space.  Carpenter was the second man to orbit the earth in Aurora 7, while Slayton’s flight was the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test project.

Our question: How many of the Mercury Seven astronauts also flew on the Space Shuttle?

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