Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States led by its newly created space agency NASA. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth...

Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States led by its newly created space agency NASA. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth, and doing it before the Soviet Union, as part of the early space race. It involved 7 astronauts flying a total of 6 solo trips. On 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space in a suborbital flight after the Soviet Union had put Yuri Gagarin into space and orbit one month earlier. John Glenn became the first American to reach orbit on 20 February 1962, he was the third person to do so, after soviet Gherman Titov had made a day long flight in August 1961. When the project ended in May 1963, the Americans' NASA program was still behind the Soviet Space Program, but the gap was seen as closing. The race to the Moon began.
The space race started in 1957 by the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I. This came as a shock to the American public and led to the creation of NASA to gather the efforts in space exploration already existing in USA. After the launch of the first American satellite in 1958, manned space flight became the next goal. The spacecraft was produced by McDonnell Aircraft. It was cone shaped with room for one person together with supplies of water, food and oxygen in a pressurized cabin. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida by modified military missiles, most importantly Atlas D, and had a rescue tower for protection from a failing rocket. The whole flight could be controlled from the ground through a network of tracking stations which also allowed communication with the astronaut. If necessary, the astronaut could override commands from the ground. For reentry into Earth's atmosphere, small rockets were used to bring the spacecraft out of its orbit. A heatshield would protect the spacecraft from the heat of reentry, and a parachute would slow the craft for a water landing. Here both astronaut and spacecraft were picked up by helicopter and brought to a ship.
From a slow start with humiliating mistakes, the Mercury Project became popular and the manned flights were followed by millions on radio and TV not only in United States, but around the world. Apart from the manned missions, Mercury had a total of 20 unmanned launches as a part of the development of the project. This also involved test animals, most famously the chimpanzees Ham and Enos. Mercury laid the groundwork for Project Gemini and the follow-on Apollo moon-landing program, which was announced a few weeks after the first manned flight. The astronauts went under the name Mercury Seven and they named their spacecraft with a "7" to the name. The project name was taken from Mercury, a Roman god. It is estimated to have cost $1.71 billion and have involved the work of 2 million people.

Yossi Leshem worked at the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), the leading NGO in Israel, for 25 years, as a guide, as Director of a Field Study Center,as Head of the Nature Protection Department, Initiator and Director of the Israel Raptor Information Center between 1980-1991, and as the Executive Director of the SPNI between 1991-1995.  Leshem is Senior Researcher in the Department of Zoology in the Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University and is the founder and Director of the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration at Latrun, Israel, established by Tel Aviv University and the SPNI.  In November 2007 he was elected as the Chairman of the SPNI Council.  Leshem has been involved in many aspects of nature conservation, with the emphasis on bird research for 38 years. Since 1984 his research for his doctorate, which was conducted with the cooperation of the Israeli Air Force and the Ministry of Science, has resulted in a decrease of 76% in the number of collisions with aircraft caused by birds, and has saved 790 million dollars, not to mention the numbers of lives, both human and avian. Today he serves as Lt. Col. (Ret) in the Israeli Air Force and continues this research. In 2005 he won the prestigious Mike Kuhring Prize for achievements of high significance for an improved flight safety concerning the bird problems of aviation, and for his mission to connect safety with nature conservation via education that gave bird strike prevention world wide appreciation.  Leshem is involved in a variety of activities in bird migration research, in educational activities that take place in over 250 schools in Israel part of cooperation with the Palestinians and the Jordanians, and has developed an educational and scientific site on the Internet ( www.birds.org.il ) called "Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries". Leshem developed a 6 year research and an educational program in cooperation with the Palestinians and Jordanians under the same title as the web site.  At the moment Dr. Leshem is conducting a number of scientific projects, among them a project which tracks migrating birds that have been fitted with satellite transmitters, and a project that tracks migration with the aid of radar, in cooperation with a team of Russian immigrant scientists.  Leshem initiated a program to use Barn Owls and Kestrels as pest controllers to reduce the use of pesticides in agricultural fields, which became a national program and a regional project with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.  Leshem published 3 books, scientific papers, and hundreds of articles in popular magazines.  Dr. Leshem visited Japan as a visiting Prof. at the University of Tokyo, June 30 th – October 12 th, 2006. Leshem is a Recipient of "Lifetime Achievement Award for Environmental Protection" in 2008, given for sixty years of Israel.