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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The film "Astronauts: United States Project Mercury," released in 1960, documents the rigorous training of America's first seven astronauts as part of NASA's Project Mercury. It highlights the ...

Part 2 explores the dramatically different approaches to the launch systems, and the surprising similarities in the factors ...

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, ...

Astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra delighted mission control with their rendition of the Christmas classic ...