People of a certain age will remember the first seven astronauts introduced by NASA with great fanfare on April 9,1959. These instant celebrities were all over the news, looking futuristic in their silver flight suits and considered heroes before they even left Earth. A few names can be recalled today, such as Alan Shepard, first American in space, and John Glenn, the most conspicuous of the group who was the first American to orbit the Earth. He later became a US Senator and slipped the bonds of our atmosphere again on Space Shuttle Discovery aged 77. They were dubbed the Mercury 7 after the space programme to which they belonged. They were larger-than-life former test pilots with the 'right stuff'.
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