Mercury was NASA's inaugural human spaceflight program. The program had two aims: to see if humans could function effectively in space, and to put a man in space before the Soviet Union did. While Mercury failed in the second aim, it did provide the technological basis for more challenging missions in the Gemini and Apollo programs. It also turned the seven original astronauts into superstars.
Program origins
In the late 1950s, the United States was worried about the Soviet Union's supremacy in space exploration. The Soviet Union unexpectedly sent Sputnik, the first satellite into space, on Oct. 4, 1957. The U.S. Congress urged action immediately to deal with the problem, with some politicians saying the Soviet coup might be a threat to national security.
There were some calls to create a military astronaut space program, building on the high-altitude flights that test pilots were already conducting. President Dwight Eisenhower initially agreed, but upon speaking with some advisors, he ultimately backed a proposal for a non-military space agency called NASA that would send the first astronauts into space. NASA was formed in 1958 from the former National Advisory Committee on Astronautics (NACA), and several other centers.
