Project Mercury
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50 free Project Mercury trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Project Mercury was the United States' first attempt to put a person in space. Between 1958 and 1963 it turned seven military test pilots into household names, flew six of them, and showed that a human could work in orbit and come home safely. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about Project Mercury: the astronauts and the names they gave their capsules, the converted missiles that carried them, the animals that flew first, the launch-pad delays and in-flight scares, and the engineers and mathematicians who kept the missions on track. It suits space fans, students of the Cold War and anyone who enjoyed The Right Stuff or Hidden Figures. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up something new even on the questions you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Mercury astronaut became the first American in space with a suborbital flight in May 1961?
Alan Shepard
Alan Shepard launched about three weeks after the Soviet Union put the first person in orbit. An estimated 45 million Americans watched the launch on television.
Q 02Which chimpanzee rode a Mercury capsule into space in January 1961, three months before the first American astronaut?
Ham
Ham, named for the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, pushed levers on cue almost as fast as he did on the ground. He was known only as No. 65 until he came back safely.
Q 03What did Gus Grissom have painted on the side of his Mercury capsule before his 1961 flight?
A white crack
A white crack, copied from the real Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, ran about two-thirds of the way up Liberty Bell 7. The capsule sank after splashdown and lay on the seabed for 38 years.
Q 04What did Gordon Cooper do on the launch pad during the countdown to the final Mercury flight in 1963?
Fell asleep
Gordon Cooper fell asleep in his capsule before liftoff, and later became the first American to sleep in orbit as well. His flight lasted 34 hours, longer than all five earlier Mercury missions combined.
Q 05Which Soviet cosmonaut orbited Earth in April 1961, beating Project Mercury's first astronaut into space by three weeks?
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin circled the planet once aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. The Soviets followed that August with a flight lasting a full day, before any American had reached orbit at all.
Q 06Which NASA mathematician did John Glenn insist must verify the computer's numbers before his 1962 orbital flight?
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson was the person Glenn asked for by name, and he refused to fly until she had checked the calculations. Her story reached cinemas in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
Q 07Which president insisted that Project Mercury's astronauts be chosen only from active-duty military test pilots?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower's rule cut the field to 508 military pilots and shut out civilians, including a young Neil Armstrong. Women could not qualify either, because the services barred them from flying.
Q 08What did long launch-pad delays in May 1961 force the first American in space to do inside his suit?
Urinate
He had to urinate where he lay, and the liquid shorted out electrodes tracking his vital signs. Nobody had fitted a collection device, because the flight was meant to be so short.
Q 09Which food did John Glenn squeeze from an aluminum tube to test eating in weightlessness in 1962?
Applesauce
Applesauce went down without trouble, settling experts' worry that swallowing might not work without gravity. The tubes were later dropped because the food could not be seen or smelled.
Q 10Which author told the story of the Mercury astronauts in the 1979 book The Right Stuff?
Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe interviewed test pilots, the astronauts and their wives for the book. The 1983 film version was nominated for eight Oscars and won four.
Q 11John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in February 1962 aboard which Mercury capsule?
Friendship 7
Friendship 7 was a name Glenn settled on with his wife and children after they combed dictionaries and a thesaurus. The capsule was later sent on a world tour.
Q 12Mission control for Project Mercury's crewed flights sat not in Houston but at which launch site?
Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral in Florida housed the Mercury Control Center as well as the launch pads. Flight control only moved to Houston in 1965, two years after the program ended.
Q 13Weeks after Project Mercury's first crewed flight in 1961, President Kennedy asked Congress to back which goal?
Landing a man on the Moon
Q 21Which Mercury Seven astronaut became the only person to fly in all three of NASA's first crewed space programs?
Wally Schirra
Wally Schirra orbited six times in a capsule he called Sigma 7, later flew the first space rendezvous, and finally commanded a three-man crew in 1968. He was also the first astronaut to go into space three times.
Q 22Which Mercury Seven astronaut was grounded by an irregular heartbeat in 1962 and did not reach space until 1975?
Deke Slayton
Deke Slayton spent the wait deciding which astronauts flew which missions, as director of flight crew operations. He finally flew on a joint mission with Soviet cosmonauts after doctors cleared him in 1972.
Q 23What caused Gus Grissom's capsule, Liberty Bell 7, to flood and sink just after splashdown in July 1961?
Landing a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s became the national goal when only one American had been to space, and he had not even reached orbit.
Q 14Which famous test pilot, barred from Project Mercury for lacking a college degree, mocked its astronauts as canned meat?
Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager, the first person to fly faster than sound, had never earned a degree. He became a critic of the program, calling the men in the capsules spam in a can.
Q 15About how long did the first American spaceflight last, from liftoff in Florida to splashdown in the Atlantic?
15 minutes
15 minutes was all it took: the capsule arced 116 miles up and came down about 300 miles out to sea without ever circling the planet.
Q 16John Glenn, the first American in orbit, later spent 24 years as a US senator for which state?
Ohio
Ohio first elected Glenn in 1974 and kept him in the Senate until 1999. He had grown up in the state, in the small town of New Concord.
Q 17Gus Grissom, the second American in space, died in a 1967 launch-pad fire while training for which mission?
Apollo 1
Apollo 1 never left the ground: a fire during a pre-launch test killed Grissom and his two crewmates. Grissom is the only one of the seven Mercury astronauts who did not live to retire.
Q 18Which two-man NASA program followed Project Mercury and perfected the docking of spacecraft in orbit?
Gemini
Gemini made further Mercury flights seem unnecessary, so plans for more day-long missions and even a three-day one were dropped. Mercury ended after its sixth crewed flight.
Q 19Which German-born engineer led the Army team in Alabama that built the rocket for America's first crewed spaceflight?
Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun ran the Army's rocket team at Redstone Arsenal, and the rocket took the arsenal's name. He went on to be chief architect of the Saturn V.
Q 20Mercury's astronauts insisted that the capsule's design include manual controls and which other feature?
A window
A window in front of the pilot replaced two small portholes from the second crewed flight onward. The manual controls proved their worth on the last flight, when the automatic systems failed before reentry.
Its hatch blew open
Its hatch blew open by accident while he waited for the recovery helicopter, and seawater poured in. The flooded capsule was 1,000 pounds too heavy for the helicopter to lift.
Q 24The glowing specks John Glenn called fireflies outside his capsule in 1962 were probably what?
Ice crystals
Ice crystals venting from the spacecraft itself are the likely answer, lit up at each orbital sunrise. The next Mercury pilot found he could shake more loose by banging on the capsule wall.
Q 25Which rocket, built as America's first operational ICBM, carried John Glenn and three more Mercury pilots into orbit?
Atlas
Atlas had fuel tanks of steel so thin that only the pressure inside kept them rigid, like a balloon. A man-rated version of the missile carried all four of Mercury's orbital pilots.
Q 26The Redstone rocket that launched the first two Mercury astronauts was a direct descendant of which German weapon?
V-2 missile
The V-2 missile had been developed by many of the same engineers, who were brought to the United States after World War II. Redstone even burned essentially the same propellants.
Q 27Which breakfast, eaten before America's first crewed spaceflight in 1961, became a launch-day tradition for astronauts?
Steak and eggs
Steak and eggs came at the end of three days on a special diet meant to keep the pilot from needing the toilet in flight. The first man to eat it also had toast, coffee and orange juice.
Q 28Which Soviet satellite's 1957 launch shocked the United States into creating NASA and starting Project Mercury?
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 raised fears that America was falling into a missile gap. A month later the Soviets orbited a dog, which made it plain that a human would follow.
Q 29At age 77, John Glenn returned to orbit in 1998 aboard which Space Shuttle?
Discovery
Discovery carried Glenn 36 years after his Mercury flight, making him the only person to fly in both programs. He was still a sitting senator when he went.
Q 30Residents of which Australian city switched on their lights to greet John Glenn as he passed overhead in 1962?
Perth
Perth earned the nickname City of Light for the gesture, which made news around the world. The city did it again when Glenn flew over on the Space Shuttle in 1998.