Contributing Authors Include Walter C. Williams, James E. Bost, Charles W. McGuire, And Many Others.

Catchpole tells the fascinating story behind the development of the first American manned space program and its associated infrastructure. He provides accounts of the space launch vehicles, astronauts and their training, tracking systems and individual flights.

This document presents the results of the first United States manned orbital space flight conducted on February 20, 1962. The prelaunch activities, spacecraft description, flight operations, flight data, and postflight analyses presented form a continuation of the information previously published for the two United States manned suborbital space flights conducted on May 5, 1961, and July 21, 1961, respectively, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.