Glenn

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1961 Late summer. (Cancelled flight). Crew: Glenn. Backup Crew: Slayton. Program: Mercury. The original Mercury project plan envisioned all of the astronauts making an initial suborbital hop aboard a Redstone booster before making an orbital flight aboard an Atlas. However delays in the program resulted in the Redstone flights coming much closer to the Atlas flights than planned. By the time of the first suborbital Mercury flight, the Russians had already orbited Yuri Gagarin. After Grissom's capsule sunk, it was still planned to fly Glenn on a suborbital flight to prove the capsule. But Gherman Titov was launched on a full-day orbital flight in August 1961, making NASA's suborbital hops look pathetic. Glenn was moved to the first orbital Atlas flight, and further suborbital Mercury flights were cancelled.

• 1961 Aug 18 - Further Mercury suborbital flights cancelled.  Spacecraft: Mercury. Launch Vehicle: Redstone.

  NASA announced that analysis of Project Mercury suborbital data indicated that all objectives of that phase of the program had been achieved, and that no further Mercury-Redstone flights were planned.

• - 1961 Late summer - Mercury MR-5 (cancelled)  Crew: Glenn. Spacecraft: Mercury. Payload: Mercury SC15. Launch Vehicle: Redstone.

  The original Mercury project plan envisioned all of the astronauts making an initial suborbital hop aboard a Redstone booster before making an orbital flight aboard an Atlas. But Gherman Titov was launched on a full-day orbital flight in August 1961, making NASA's suborbital hops look pathetic. Further suborbital Mercury flights after that of Grissom were cancelled.

• 1999 Jul 20 - Retrieval of Liberty Bell 7 Capsule From Ocean Floor