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

New Shepard is named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, who flew on a suborbital trajectory during the Mercury program in 1961.

From Washington Post

By contrast, when the astronaut John Glenn was selected for the Mercury program, he also did not have an engineering degree.

From New York Times

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

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