Project Mercury - Space Race

Space Race

On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 and ignited the Space Race, a part of the Cold War. The next step of this became the competition between the Mercury Project and the Soviet Vostok Program of bringing a pilot into space and in orbit around the Earth. In the first Mercury mission on 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space and the second person following Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union who flew one month earlier. John Glenn became the first American (third overall, following Gagarin and Titov) to reach orbit on February 20, 1962, during the third manned Mercury flight. Three more orbital flights were made, the last in 1963.

Two suborbital flights were cancelled; they began to look embarrassing after the Soviet Union had made a day-long orbital flight in August 1961. Three orbital flights were also cancelled since it was clear that the spacecraft had reached its limits. At the last flight the batteries were exhausted before reentry but, luckily, the spacecraft landed safely.

The USA had lost the first round of the space race to the Soviets; however, the FAI rules in 1961 required that a pilot must land safely with the spacecraft for the flight to be considered an official spaceflight. In reality, Gagarin landed separately by parachute while the space craft crashed to the ground, but the Soviet Union did not admit this until 1971.

Although the FAI initially refused to recognize Gagarin's pioneering flight, it subsequently amended its position to recognize (as the FAI website states) that he was the "first human being to journey into outer space".