Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights, and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $2.57 billion. The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.
Titan was a family of United States expendable rockets used between 1959 and 2005. The Titan I and Titan II were part of the US Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet until 1987. The space launch vehicle versions contributed the majority of the 368 Titan launches, including all the Project Gemini crewed flights of the mid-1960s. Titan vehicles were also used to lift US military payloads as well as civilian agency reconnaissance satellites and to send interplanetary scientific probes throughout the Solar System.
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II and had its peak with the more particular Moon Race to land on the Moon between the US moonshot and Soviet moonshot programs. The technological advantage demonstrated by spaceflight achievement was seen as necessary for national security and became part of the symbolism and ideology of the time. The Space Race brought pioneering launches of artificial satellites, robotic space probes to the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately to the Moon.
Human spaceflight programs have been conducted, started, or planned by multiple countries and companies. The age of crewed rocket flight was initiated by Fritz von Opel who piloted the world's first rocket-propelled flight on 30 September 1929. All space flights depend on rocket technology; von Opel was the co-designer and financier of the visionary project. Until the 21st century, human spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, through either the military or civilian space agencies. With the launch of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of human spaceflight programs – commercial human spaceflight – arrived. By the end of 2022, three countries and one private company (SpaceX) had successfully launched humans to Earth orbit, and two private companies had launched humans on a suborbital trajectory.
Mercury-Atlas 8 (MA-8) was the fifth United States crewed space mission, part of NASA's Mercury program. Astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., orbited the Earth six times in the Sigma 7 spacecraft on October 3, 1962, in a nine-hour flight focused mainly on technical evaluation rather than on scientific experimentation. This was the longest U.S. crewed orbital flight yet achieved in the Space Race, though well behind the several-day record set by the Soviet Vostok 3 earlier in the year. It confirmed the Mercury spacecraft's durability ahead of the one-day Mercury-Atlas 9 mission that followed in 1963.
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida.
Gemini 2 was the second spaceflight of the American human spaceflight program Project Gemini, and was launched and recovered on January 19, 1965. Gemini 2, like Gemini 1, was an uncrewed mission intended as a test flight of the Gemini spacecraft. Unlike Gemini 1, which was placed into orbit, Gemini 2 made a suborbital flight, primarily intended to test the spacecraft's heat shield. It was launched on a Titan II GLV rocket. The spacecraft used for the Gemini 2 mission was later refurbished into the Gemini B configuration, and was subsequently launched on another suborbital flight, along with OPS 0855, as a test for the US Air Force Manned Orbital Laboratory. Gemini spacecraft no. 2 was the first craft to make more than one spaceflight since the X-15, and the only one until Space Shuttle Columbia flew its second mission in 1981; it would also be the only space capsule to be reused until Crew Dragon Endeavour was launched a second time in 2021.
The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including aerial reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and as a space interceptor to sabotage enemy satellites. The program ran from October 24, 1957, to December 10, 1963, cost US$660 million, and was cancelled just after spacecraft construction had begun.
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was part of the United States Air Force (USAF) human spaceflight program in the 1960s. The project was developed from early USAF concepts of crewed space stations as reconnaissance satellites, and was a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane. Plans for the MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, for which crews would be launched on 30-day missions, and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft and launched with the laboratory.
Project Gemini was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first, Project Mercury, and while the Apollo program was still in development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual astronauts flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions during 1965 and 1966.
Blue Gemini was a United States Air Force (USAF) project first proposed in August 1962 for a series of seven flights of Gemini spacecraft to enable the Air Force to gain crewed spaceflight experience prior to the launch of the Manned Orbital Development System, or MODS. The plan was to use off-the-shelf Gemini spacecraft.
Before the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, NASA began studies of Space Shuttle designs as early as October 1968. The early studies were denoted "Phase A", and in June 1970, "Phase B", which were more detailed and specific. The primary intended use of the Space Shuttle was supporting the future space station, ferrying a minimum crew of four and about 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg) of cargo, and being able to be rapidly turned around for future flights.
Atlas is a family of US missiles and space launch vehicles that originated with the SM-65 Atlas. The Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program was initiated in the late 1950s under the Convair Division of General Dynamics. Atlas was a liquid propellant rocket burning RP-1 kerosene fuel with liquid oxygen in three engines configured in an unusual "stage-and-a-half" or "parallel staging" design: two outboard booster engines were jettisoned along with supporting structures during ascent, while the center sustainer engine, propellant tanks and other structural elements remained connected through propellant depletion and engine shutdown.
Space Systems Command (SSC) is the United States Space Force's space development, acquisition, launch, and logistics field command. It is headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California and manages the United States' space launch ranges.
NASA Astronaut Group 7 was a group of seven astronauts accepted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on August 14, 1969. It was the last group to be selected during the Project Apollo era, and the first since the Mercury Seven in which all members were active-duty military personnel, and all made flights into space.
Francis Gregory "Greg" Neubeck is a retired Colonel in the United States Air Force and a former USAF astronaut. Although he trained for the USAF Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL), the program was cancelled before any of the MOL crews reached space.
Advanced Gemini is a number of proposals that would have extended the Gemini program by the addition of various missions, including crewed low Earth orbit, circumlunar and lunar landing missions. Gemini was the second crewed spaceflight program operated by NASA, and consisted of a two-seat spacecraft capable of maneuvering in orbit, docking with uncrewed spacecraft such as Agena Target Vehicles, and allowing the crew to perform tethered extra-vehicular activities.
An astronaut propulsion unit is used to move an astronaut relative to the spaceship during a spacewalk. The first astronaut propulsion unit was the Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit (HHMU) used on Gemini 4.
Gemini SC-2 was the second NASA Project Gemini full-up reentry capsule built. This McDonnell Gemini capsule was the first space capsule to be reused, flying twice in suborbital flights. SC-2 flew on Gemini 2 and OPS 0855 flights. The capsule is currently on display at the Air Force Space and Missile Museum at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
While the United States Space Force gained its independence on 20 December 2019, the history of the United States Space Force can be traced back to the beginnings of the military space program following the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945. Early military space development was begun within the United States Army Air Forces by General Henry H. Arnold, who identified space as a crucial military arena decades before the first spaceflight. Gaining its independence from the Army on 18 September 1947, the United States Air Force began development of military space and ballistic missile programs, while also competing with the United States Army and United States Navy for the space mission.
