To meet his ambitious goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, John F. Kennedy greatly accelerated the space program initiated by the Eisenhower administration.
On April 9, 1959, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, seven men were selected to become Project Mercury astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Leroy Gordon Cooper, John Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald “Deke” Slayton. The goals of the Project Mercury program were specific: to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth; to investigate man's ability to function in space; and to recover astronaut and spacecraft safely.
The Soviet Union’s thrilling feats in space – the launching of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbiting of Earth in 1961 – had jarred Americans. The United States was being left behind.
President Kennedy understood the need to restore America's confidence and had the vision of not only matching the Soviets, but surpassing them. On May 21, 1961, he took a strong stand in support of space exploration. Standing before Congress to deliver a special message on "urgent national needs," he asked for an additional $7 billion to $9 billion over the next five years for the space program, proclaiming that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
President Kennedy settled upon this dramatic goal as a means of focusing and mobilizing our lagging space efforts. He did not justify the needed expenditure on the basis of science and exploration, but placed the program clearly in the camp of the competing ideologies of democracy vs. communism.
Skeptics questioned the ability of NASA to meet the President’s timetable. Within a year, however, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom became the first two Americans to travel into space.
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn Jr. became the first American to orbit Earth. The Friendship 7 capsule carrying Glenn, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, reached a maximum altitude of 162 miles and an orbital velocity of 17,500 miles per hour. After more than four hours in space, having circled the earth three times, Glenn piloted the Friendship 7 back into the atmosphere, landing in the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda.
Suddenly, what had seemed unlikely began to seem possible to the great army of people working to reach the moon. Medical researchers, engineers, test pilots, machinists, factory workers, businessmen and industrialists from across the country all worked together to achieve this goal.
By May 1963, astronauts Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra Jr. and L. Gordon Cooper had also successfully orbited Earth. (The seventh Project Mercury astronaut, Deke Slayton, was unable to fly due to a heart murmur.) With each mission, the duration of the flight was lengthened and the amount of data collected increased. As space exploration continued through the 1960s, the United States was on its way to the moon. Project Gemini’s goals were to perfect the entry and re-entry maneuvers of a space craft and to conduct further tests on how individuals are affected by long periods of space travel. The Apollo Program was designed with the specific goal of landing humans on the moon and assuring their safe return back to Earth. On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts realized President Kennedy’s dream for the space program; they successfully landed on the moon and eventually returned safely to earth.
Correspondence between President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson on the Space Program.
President Kennedy's Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs.
Text of President Kennedy's address at Rice University in Houston, Texas. (See recording above.)