John Glenn's flight of the Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7 was the first American orbital flight. It was the beginning of the first age of American space flight in which every space flight to low Earth orbit or to the moon was an event.
Later, with the introduction of the space shuttle, orbital space flight was not exactly routine, but it became, with the exception of the periods following the Challenger and Columbia disasters, regular.
Feb. 20, 1962: Glenn flew Friendship 7 for the first American orbital mission. He flew three orbits around Earth.
May 24, 1962: Scott Carpenter flew Aurora 7 in a duplicate of Glenn's mission.
Oct. 3, 1962: Walter Schirra flew Sigma 7 for six orbits around Earth.
May 15-16, 1963: Gordon Cooper Flew Faith 7 for 22 orbits around Earth.
The Gemini Program
March 23, 1965: Gus Grissom and John Young flew Gemini 3 for three orbits around Earth.
June 3-7, 1965: James McDivitt and Ed White flew Gemini 4 for 62 orbits around Earth. White performs first American space walk.
Aug. 21-29, 1965: Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad flew Gemini 5 for 120 orbits around Earth.
Dec. 4-18, 1965: Frank Borman and James Lovell flew Gemini 7 for 206 orbits around Earth. Established long duration space flight record. Rendezvoused with the Gemini 6 capsule.
Dec. 15-16, 1965: Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford flew Gemini 6 for 16 orbits around Earth. Rendezvoused with the Gemini 7 capsule.
March 16-17, 1966: Neil Armstrong and David Scott flew Gemini 8 for seven orbits around Earth. First successful docking with an Agena target vehicle. Yaw and roll problem with spacecraft caused the mission to be cut short.
June 3-6, 1966: Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan flew Gemini 9 for 47 orbit. Docking with Agena target vehicle partly successful due to failure to jettison of a shroud. Cernan performed an EVA, which was only partly successful because his visor fogged.
July 18-21, 1966: John Young and Michael Collins flew Gemini 10 for 43 orbits. The spacecraft successfully docked with the Agena target vehicle.
Sept. 12-15, 1966: Charles Conrad and Richard Gordon flew Gemini 11 for 44 orbits. Spacecraft was successfully docked with the Agena target vehicle. Gordon performed an EVA and tied the two spacecraft together with a tether.
Nov. 11-15, 1966: James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin flew Gemini 12 for 59 orbits. Spacecraft successfully docked with Agena test vehicle and an EVA was performed.
Oct. 11-22, 1968: Walter Schirra, Walt Cunningham, and Don Eisele flew Apollo 7 for 163 orbits.
March 3-13, 1969: James McDivitt, Russell Schweickert, and Dave Scott fly Apollo 9 for 151 orbits. First test of the lunar module in low Earth orbit. The Apollo capsule docked with the LM and McDivitt and Schweickart flew the lunar module separately, successfully completing a number of maneuvers, before re-docking with the Apollo capsule.
July 15-25, 1975: Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton flew the Apollo part of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. The Apollo rendezvoused and docked with a Soviet Soyuz flown by Valeriy Nikolayevich Kubasov and Alexei Arhipovich Leonov flew the Soyuz. Slayton was the last of the original Mercury 7 astronauts to fly a space mission.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
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