1961 – Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission: Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).
The second United States human spaceflight happened with Mercury-Redstone 4, on July 21, 1961. The suborbital Project Mercury flight was launched with a Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, MRLV-8. The spacecraft, Mercury capsule number 11, was nicknamed Liberty Bell 7. It was piloted by astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom. The spaceflight lasted 15 minutes 30 seconds, reached an altitude of more than 102.8 nautical miles, and flew 262.5 nautical miles downrange, landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The flight went as expected until just after splashdown, when the hatch cover, designed to release explosively in the event of an emergency, accidentally blew. Grissom was at risk of drowning, but was recovered safely via a U.S. Navy helicopter. The spacecraft sank into the Atlantic and was not recovered until 1999.
2011 – NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends after 135 missions with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135 at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida
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