Air Force pilot Gordon Cooper became an expert on the Redstone Rocket that would launch Mercury astronauts on short training flights.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

It needed much more power than the rockets used to launch the one-man Mercury and the two-man Gemini flights.

VOA: special.2009.07.08

The results of the two short flights made space officials believe the Mercury program was ready for its first orbital flight.

VOA: special.2009.06.17

Its Titan rocket could lift three times as much weight into space as the Atlas rocket used for the Mercury flights.

VOA: special.2009.06.24

Each of the new astronauts,however, brought his own special knowledge and skills to the Mercury project.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

Much work had to be done before Project Mercury could put an American astronaut into space.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

Astronauts in NASA's Mercury Program flew the first American space flights in the early nineteen-sixties.

VOA: special.2011.04.06

All of the systems on the Mercury spacecraft sent radio signals to flight controllers.

VOA: special.2009.06.17

He began a program of observing not only Mars, but also Venus and Mercury.

VOA: special.2010.07.11

But they did something that the Mercury astronauts had not been able to do.

VOA: special.2009.06.24

He helped design the space suits that would protect the Mercury astronauts in space.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

I'm Shirley Griffith. Listen again next week to the second part of the story of the Mercury program that took the first American astronauts into space.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

Schirra had been the pilot on an almost perfect Mercury flight three years before.

VOA: special.2009.06.24

The Mercury spacecraft had the needed atmospheric pressure to keep the astronauts safe.

VOA: special.2011.04.06

It placed orders for four different kinds of military rockets for Mercury flights.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

It chose the McDonnell Aircraft Company to design and build the Mercury spacecraft.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

Alan Shepard made only a fifteen-minute flight in the little one-man Mercury spacecraft.

VOA: special.2009.07.08

Men would fly the Mercury spacecraft only after it was proved safe.

VOA: special.2009.06.17

He would circle the Earth three times during a five-hour Mercury flight.

VOA: special.2009.06.17

The first manned flight of project Mercury was a complete success.

VOA: special.2009.06.17

And Virgil Grissom,of the Air Force, worked on Mercury's electrical systems.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

Within three months, the man-in-space program had a name: Project Mercury.

VOA: special.2009.06.10

One involves landing on the surface of the planet Mercury.

VOA: special.2010.05.25

So he helped design easy-to-use instruments for the Mercury spacecraft.

VOA: special.2009.06.10