The Mercury program was designed to conduct the first U.S. experiments with astronauts in Earth orbit. There were six manned Mercury flights (missions 4 to 9), with the final Mercury mission lasting approximately 1 1/2 days. Mercury 4, the first manned suborbital flight by the U.S., lasted for 15 minutes on May 5, 1961 with astronaut Alan Shepard on board. During the Mercury 6 flight on February 20, 1962, John Glenn not only became the first American to orbit the Earth but also was the first person to carry a still camera into space. Glenn used a modified 35mm rangefinder camera that he purchased in a Cocoa Beach drugstore. On his three-orbit flight, he shot two rolls of film of sunsets, sunrises, and aerial views. Seeing the potential of astronaut photography after GlennÕs mission, NASA sent Walter Schirra on his Mercury 8 flight with a Hasselblad camera, which became standard-issue equipment for the later Gemini and Apollo missions. Mercury 9 astronaut Gordon Cooper was an avid amateur photographer whose success with in-flight experimental infrared weather photography spurred NASA to routinely include such assignments during other missions. CooperÕs film was the first by an astronaut to have each frame analyzed and described by NASA, in effect launching the agencyÕs photographic technology department.
