On February 20, 1962, American newspaper headlines proclaimed the story everyone had been waiting for: GLENN ORBITS EARTH THREE TIMES SAFELY. After 1,160 days of hard, painstaking effort, the men of Project Mercury had achieved their goal.

Americans into Orbit is a vivid account of the first historic American space flights and the skill and hard work which made them possible. In the fall of 1958, dismayed by the American lag in the space race with the Soviet Union, the United States government handed a group of engineers and scientists a most challenging assignment. Their job was to send a manned space capsule into orbit around the earth, study the man's ability to live and work in space, and then return the man and the capsule safely back to earth.

With great clarity, Gene Gurney describes the complex activities of the project Mercury program—the designing, constructing and testing of the space capsule, the establishing of the Cape Canaveral Control Center and tracking stations, the selection and training of the seven astronauts, and the exciting flights of the first courageous space pilots.

Americans into Orbit is a fascinating and detailed account of the remarkable accomplishment of a dedicated group of space pioneers. Illustrated with more than 60 photographs.

From the dust jacket