Mercury Seven Mercury Seven The Mercury Seven were the group of seven Mercury astronauts announced by NASA on April 9, 1959. They are also referred to as the Original Seven or Astronaut Group 1. They piloted the manned spaceflights of the Mercury program from May 1961 to May 1963. These seven original American astronauts were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. Members of the group flew on all classes of NASA manned orbital spacecraft of the 20th century — Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. Gus Grissom died in 1967, in the
Seven Heavens seven corresponds to the seven classical planets known to antiquity. Ancient observers noticed that these objects moved at different paces in the sky both from each other and from the fixed stars beyond them: Mercury, Venus, the Moon, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Unlike comets, which appeared in the sky with no warning, they did move in regular patterns that could be predicted. They also observed that objects in the sky influenced objects on earth, as when movements of the sun affect the behavior of plants or movements of the moon affect ocean tides. While others believe the seven