Project Mercury stretches its legs with the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission

Close-up view of Mercury-Atlas 8 (MA-8) astronaut Walter Schirra Jr. being removed from his Sigma 7 capsule by Navy personnel. Credit: NASA

In this weeks installment of the Terranauts Guide to Leaving the Planet, NASA ups the workload for those working on Walter Schirra Jr.’s Mercury-Atlas 8 mission.

If you can do something three times, doing it three more times doesn’t sound like it should be that hard. Unless, of course, you’re talking about orbiting the planet. In this episode we take a look at the third Project Mercury manned orbital flight – which doubled the number of orbits from three to six and we talk about why that was a lot more work for the Project Mercury Terranauts than you might have expected.

About Terranauts season 2

This year on Terranauts we’re going to offer a mix of interviews with Terranauts, people who go to space all the time without leaving the planet, and we’re also planning regular instalments of the Terranauts Guide to Leaving the Planet where we explore the history of humankind’s adventures off the planet.

The Show

Listen to and Subscribe to the Podcast

All of SpaceQ’s podcasts are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and your favourite podcast app.

About Iain Christie

Founder and CEO at SideKickSixtyFive Consulting and host of the Terranauts podcast. Iain is a seasoned business executive with deep understanding of the space business and government procurement policy. Iain worked for 22 years at Neptec including as CEO. He was a VP at the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, is a mentor at the Creative Destruction Lab and a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management.

Leave a Reply