From a Cape Canaveral blockhouse the seven Mercury astronauts watched tensely last week as the countdown neared zero. Atop a towering Redstone rocket rested the one-ton Mercury space capsule of ...

Those were the words Alan Shepard used 60 years ago Wednesday to note his cockpit timepiece had begun running. This meant his Redstone rocket booster had left the ground sending him and his one-man ...

Glenn became first American to orbit Earth Feb. 20, 1962. Feb. 16, 2012 — -- The world was such a scary place in 1962 that there were actually Americans who volunteered to leave it. The Cold War ...

NASA's Mercury astronauts were seven highly skilled professional test pilots. Each of them seemed to possess the strength of character and commitment necessary to overcome apparently insurmountable ...

May 5 (UPI) --President Donald Trump on Monday celebrated National Astronaut Day on the 64th anniversary of Alan Shepard becoming the first American to go into space. On May 5, 1961, Shepard's Freedom ...

Scott Carpenter, one of two remaining astronauts from NASA’s Mercury program and the second American to orbit the earth, died Wednesday at the age of 88. His family did not specify a cause of death, ...