Mercury capsule completes space race trifecta at Cradle of Aviation. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. An early American ...

A spacecraft skimmed past Mercury this week, beaming back stunning new images of the surface and showing once again that humankind has a seemingly insatiable longing to understand the universe.

On Jan. 9, 1959, NASA selected the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to develop the Mercury spacecraft, which would later carry the first American astronauts into space, Alan Shepard and Virgil ...

In the case of the Mercury space capsule, however, the patent came closer to the end. Project Mercury was conceived as a NASA programme to put the first American astronauts in space. Named after a ...

In between, nothing on the Mercury capsule would allow him to perform the simplest of pilot acts: alter his flight path. Sure, he could turn, pitch, and roll this way and that. He could see where ...

The capsule, developed with the help of government contracts, is an important part of keeping the space station running.