The Mercury Seven original astronauts were:
USN Rear Admiral Alan Bartlett “Al” Shepard, Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998), the only astronaut of the Mercury Seven to walk on the Moon;
USAF Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967), the second American to fly in space, and the first American to fly in space twice;
USMC Colonel John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (born July 18, 1921), the first American to orbit the Earth, the fifth person in space, the oldest person to fly in space, and the only one to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs – Discovery (STS-95) and the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven;
USN Commander Malcolm Scott Carpenter (May 1, 1925 – October 10, 2013), the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space;
USN Captain Walter Marty “Wally” Schirra, Jr. (March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007), the fifth American, and the ninth human, in space;
USAF Colonel Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, Jr. (March 6, 1927 – October 4, 2004), the first American to sleep in space and the last American to be launched alone to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission;
and USAF Major Donald Kent “Deke” Slayton (March 1, 1924 – June 13, 1993), grounded in 1962 by a heart murmur, he served as NASA’s director of flight crew operations from November 1963 to March 1972; docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, in 1975 the oldest person to fly in space at age 51 until broken by John Young.
