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 ...

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

Monumentally important, this is the first image of an American astronaut in space. In the Project Mercury spacecraft named ...

The Mercury rocket marked America’s first steps into human spaceflight, but its very design limited how long its success could last. In this segment, we look back at how the Redstone and Atlas ...