John Glenn actually named his spacecraft Friendship 7. The Mercury astronauts were given the privilege of naming their own spacecraft, in the USAF tradition. Alan Shepard chose Freedom 7; according to NASA, this was "because it was the seventh one made." The subsequent astronauts in the programme also used the figure 7; NASA says this was "in honor of the seven astronauts chosen for the project [Mercury]."
Details:
Mission | Call–sign | Pilot | Launch date | Duration (hh:mm:ss) | Orbits |
MR–3 | Freedom 7 | Alan Shepard | 5 May 1961 | 00:15:22 | 0 |
MR–4 | Liberty Bell 7 | Virgil 'Gus' Grissom | 21 July 1961 | 00:15:37 | 0 |
MR–6 | Friendship 7 | John Glenn | 20 February 1962 | 04:55:23 | 3 |
MR–7 | Aurora 7 | Scott Carpenter | 24 May 1962 | 04:56:05 | 3 |
MR–8 | Sigma 7 | Walter 'Wally' Shirra | 3 October 1962 | 09:13:15 | 6 |
MR–9 | Faith 7 | Gordon Cooper | 15 May 1963 | 34:19:49 | 22 |
The seventh Mercury astronaut was Donald 'Deke' Slayton, who was selected to pilot the second manned mission, but was grounded due to an irregular heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation). He eventually went into space in 1975 as one of three NASA astronauts in the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) – the first joint US–Soviet mission, in which an unnumbered Apollo command and service module (left over from the cancelled Apollo missions) docked with a Soviet capsule named Soyuz 19.
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