NASA Mercury 7
Welcome to my redesign of NASA's Mercury 7 Manned Spaceflight mission patches. I was reading about the Space Race and our achievements and I got inspired to design Freedom 7. At that point, I realized I want to do all of them. So, open up Wikipedia and any other media I could find. I was reading about each mission sequentially so I could have an ounce of the suspense of the real deal. I loved it. And before I moved on to the next mission, I designed the patch for the mission I read about.
I tried to take inspiration from the times with the colors and overall layout. So I learned a lot about earlier 1960's design as well. I hope you guys like this little project of mine. Explore Forever.
The first manned flight was by Alan Shepard. Official name Mercury-Redstone 3, he named it Freedom 7, setting a pattern for the next 6 missions. Named Mercury after the winged shoes god of travel.
Liberty Bell 7, or Mercury-Redstone 4, was the second manned spaceflight. Named after the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom flew into space for 15 minutes 30 seconds. During reentry, upon landing in the ocean, his escape hatch blew filling his capsule with salt water. It would eventually sink almost taking Grissom with it and would not be recovered until 38 years later from the ocean depths.
The third manned NASA flight was on February 20, 1962 by astronaut John Glenn. Glenn named it Friendship 7. The 7 after the first 7 astronauts in the Mercury program. He spent 4 hours 56 minutes in space and circled our planet 3 times. When he passed over cities the people below would turn their lights on so he could see where he was looking at. It was the first time the United States orbited the Earth and is considered a milestone in human history.
The fourth manned USA mission to space by NASA. In terms of scope, Astronaut Scott Carpenter completed a series of science experiments helping pave public opinion forward towards deeper space missions. During his mission Carpenter was distracted by the fireflies around his Mercury Capsule (which turned out to be ice particles reflecting off the sun) and landed 250 miles off course. He was never sent to space again because of that.
NASA mission Mercury-Atlas 8. A nine hour flight dedicated to technical assessment rather than scientific experimentation. Which is why Walter M. Schirra, Jr. chose the name Sigma 7, 7 for the original 7 astronauts which was a reoccurring theme, and Sigma which is the symbol for summation, or simply put the culmination, of the NASA space team’s efforts. The mission would be muted in response comparatively to the other Mercury missions due to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This particular mission was supposed to be second to last before proceeding from mission Mercury to Mission Gemini, which focused heavier on mans mission to the Moon. Due to the enormous success of all the Mercury missions thus far and Russia’s gusto in the space race, Astronaut Gordon Cooper’s success meant a jump to the next step in Man walking on the moon skipping the 7th Mercury planned mission. This is the last of all the Mercury missions that NASA sent out.
