Three of the original Mercury astronauts are still alive – Schirra, Glenn and Scott Carpenter. Virgil “Gus” Grissom died in the 1967 Apollo 1 fire; Donald K. “Deke” Slayton died of brain cancer in 1993; and Alan Shepard Jr., died of leukemia in 1998.

Did Gordon Cooper cheat on his wife, Trudy Cooper? Yes. In fact, his wife Trudy had left him four months prior to the astronaut selection process. However, during the selection interviews, he lied and said that he and Trudy had a healthy and stable marriage.

Glenn became the first American in orbit in 1962, and flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 to become, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space. He was the last living member of the Mercury Seven when he died in 2016 at the age of 95.

Latest Space So in total, only four of 12 moon walkers are still with us, and of the 24 men including moon walkers who have flown to the moon, only 12 remain. Cernan was the last man on the moon, leaving on Dec. 14, 1972.

Deke Slayton NASA. Donald “Deke” Slayton was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts — but he never flew in that program. Because of a heart condition, he was grounded for decades before being approved and flying in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint mission with the Soviet Union.

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Gilruth invited the Mercury 7 to his office on Jan. 19, 1961, to hold the peer vote. The ballots were never made public, but by their own accounts Glenn and Carpenter voted for each other, Schirra wrote down Shepard and Cooper chose Grissom (the votes of the other three are unknown).

Deceased (1927–2004)

Cooper prepared for the 40th anniversary of his Gemini flight, last year, that marriage ended in divorce, and he married Suzan Taylor in 1972. A NASA spokeswoman said last night that Mr. Cooper was survived by his wife but that she had no further information on survivors.

Shawnee, Oklahoma, United States

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Louise Shepard’s husband Alan was jumping into everyone’s bed but … Your California Privacy Rights Though they had been separated before Cooper was selected to become an astronaut in 1959, Gordon and Trudy did not split again until 1970, after Cooper had flown twice into space.

June 1963

61 years (1951–2012)

She is the first and youngest woman to have flown in space with a solo mission on the Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, Tereshkova remained in the space program as a cosmonaut instructor.

3 people

Bluford, Jr., selected by NASA in 1978, was the first Black American to reach space. Bluford launched aboard the eighth space shuttle mission on August 30, 1983, then went on to fly three other space shuttle missions in 1985, 1991, and 1992.

Aliko Dangote is the richest Black billionaire, and has held the title since 2013. He owns 85% of publicly-traded Dangote Cement, Africa’s largest cement producer….Black Billionaires, Ranked.

According to NASA, civilian astronauts are awarded a pay grade of anywhere from GS-11 to GS-14, so the income range is relatively wide. Starting salaries begin at just over $66,000 a year. Seasoned astronauts, on the other hand, can earn upward of $144,566 a year.

Bernard Anthony Harris Jr.

Sleeping in microgravity can be challenging! In the weightless environment of the International Space Station ( ISS ), astronauts cannot “lie down” to sleep: there is no real “up” or “down.”

How Hard Is It to Become an Astronaut? NASA hires new astronauts every four years or so, and quite a few people apply. Only 12 out of 18,300 astronaut applicants were accepted for NASA’s class of 2017 — that’s an acceptance rate of less than 1%. The road to becoming an astronaut is not easy.