Brief overview of the accomplishments of the Mercury missions. Excellent Work. Good Research and Facts.         Project Mercury, the first manned U.S. space project, became an official NASA program on October 7, 1958. The Mercury Program was given two main but broad objectives: 1. to investigate man's ability to survive and perform in the space environment and 2. to develop basic space technology and hardware for manned space flight programs to come.         NASA also had to find astronauts to …showed first 75 words of 572 total…

…showed last 75 words of 572 total…orbit on May 15, 1963, Faith 7, with Gordon Cooper, Jr. inside, went around Earth 22 times in 34and a half hours. On May 16 it too splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean where it was recovered, successfully ending the Mercury Project.         The Mercury Project, five years and $392.6 million dollars after it began, came to a close. The entire project was highly successful, achieving both of its goals. It paved the way for the next generation of NASA spacecraft: Gemini.