Mercury program

Cultural  

1. A program of rocket-powered flights undertaken by the United States with the goal of putting a man in orbit around the Earth. Each Mercury flight carried one astronaut. The program ran from 1961 to 1963 and was named after the Roman god Mercury, the messenger of the gods.

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The first United States suborbital flight was made by Alan Shepard in 1961.

In 1962, John Glenn made the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.

Example Sentences

There would be three more missions in the one-manned Mercury program, culminating in Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 mission, which completed 22 Earth orbits.

From Salon • Jul. 26, 2023

New Shepard, which cannot be piloted from inside the spacecraft, is named for Alan Shepard, who in 1961 became the first American in space during a suborbital flight as part of NASA’s pioneering Mercury program.

From Reuters • Jul. 18, 2021

The fame the young airman from Ohio gained from the record-setting flight helped land him a spot in NASA’s Mercury program.

From Seattle Times • May 28, 2018

Glenn was one of the seven original astronauts in NASA’s Mercury program, which was a conspicuous symbol of the country’s military and technological might at the height of the Cold War.

From Washington Post • Apr. 6, 2017

Then came Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra, and finally Gordon Cooper finished up the Mercury program in May 1963, staying up for thirty-four hours.

From "Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story" by Michael Collins