Project Mercury: the first NASA astronauts are presented.

Project Mercury: the first NASA astronauts are presented.

Project Mercury: the first NASA astronauts are presented.

On this day, in 1959, the National Administration of Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), presented to the press the first American astronauts. Of the 32 candidates to participate in Project Mercury, the first manned space program of the United States, they were elected Seven: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr. Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton.

The selection process was tough: the 32 pilots underwent extensive medical and psychological tests and intense examinations. 

These included stand for one hour in a pressure chamber that simulated a height of 20 kilometers and two hours in a chamber reached a temperature of 55 ° Celsius. Less than a month after the Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, Project Mercury sent Alan Shepard in suborbital flight.

The February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. 

36 years after its first flight, John Glenn, 77 years old, made another trip to space where you studied, among other things, the relationship of aging with spaceflight.