Who was the American astronaut that was part of Project Mercury who carried an 8-note Hohner harmonica and a handful of small bells aboard a Gemini 6A rocket ship?
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Music in space Music in space is music played in or broadcast from a spacecraft in outer space. The Smithsonian Institution claims that the first musical instruments played in outer space were an 8-note Hohner "Little Lady" harmonica and a handful of small bells carried by American astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford aboard Gemini 6A. Upon achieving a space rendezvous in Earth orbit with their sister sister ship Gemini 7 in December 1965, Schirra and Stafford played a rendition of "Jingle Bells" over the radio after jokingly claiming to have seen an unidentified flying object piloted by Santa Claus. The harmonica was donated to the Smithsonian by Schirra in 1967, with his note that it "...plays quite well".
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Wally Schirra Walter Marty "Wally" Schirra Jr. (March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007), (CAPT, USN), was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, United States first effort to put humans in space. He flew the six-orbit, nine-hour Mercury-Atlas 8 mission on October 3, 1962, becoming the fifth American, and the ninth human, to ride a rocket into space. In the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 ft of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965. In October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, an 11-day low Earth orbit shakedown test of the three-man Apollo Command/Service Module. He was the first person to go into space three times, and the only person to have flown in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, logging a total of 295 hours and 15 minutes in space. He retired from the U.S. Navy at the rank of Captain and from NASA after his Apollo flight, becoming a consultant to CBS News for its coverage of the subsequent Apollo flights. He joined Walter Cronkite as co-anchor for the seven Moon landing missions.
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Mike Mullane Richard Michael "Mike" Mullane (born September 10, 1945) is an engineer, a retired USAF officer and a former NASA astronaut, flying on three Space Shuttle missions.
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STS-41-G STS-41-G was the 13th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the sixth flight of Space Shuttle "Challenger". "Challenger" launched on 5 October 1984, and conducted the second shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center on 13 October. It was the first shuttle mission to carry a crew of seven, including the first crew with two women (Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan), the first American EVA involving a woman (Sullivan), the first Australian-born person to journey into space and the first astronaut with a beard (Paul Scully-Power) and the first Canadian astronaut (Marc Garneau).
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STS-76 STS-76 was NASA's 76th Space Shuttle mission, and the 16th mission for "Atlantis". STS-76 launched on 22 March 1996 at 3:13 am EST (UTC −5) from Kennedy Space Center launch pad 39B. STS-76 lasted over 9 days, traveled about 3800000 mi while orbiting Earth an estimated 145 times, and landing at 5:28 am PST (UTC −8) on 31 March 1996 at Edwards Air Force Base runway 22.
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TIMED The TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) is an orbiter mission dedicated to study the dynamics of the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere (MLT) portion of the Earth's atmosphere. The mission was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on December 7, 2001 aboard a Delta II rocket launch vehicle. The project is sponsored and managed by NASA, while the spacecraft was designed and assembled by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. The mission has been extended several times, and has now collected data over an entire solar cycle, which helps in its goal to differentiate the Sun's effects on the atmosphere from other effects.
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Michael J. Adams Michael James "Mike" Adams (May 5, 1930 – November 15, 1967), (Maj, USAF), was an American aviator, aeronautical engineer, and USAF astronaut. He was the first American space mission fatality, according to the United States definition.
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USNS Wally Schirra (T-AKE-8) USNS "Wally Schirra" (T-AKE-8) is a "Lewis and Clark"-class dry cargo ship of the United States Navy, named in honor of Captain Wally Schirra (1923–2007), one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, who flew three times in space, on Mercury 8, Gemini 6A, and Apollo 7.
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Apollo 16 Apollo 16 was the tenth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands. The second of the so-called "J missions," it was crewed by Commander John Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:54 PM EST on April 16, 1972, the mission lasted 11 days, 1 hour, and 51 minutes, and concluded at 2:45 PM EST on April 27.
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Mercury-Redstone 2 Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) was the penultimate test flight of the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle prior to the first manned American space mission in Project Mercury. It was launched at 16:55 UTC on January 31, 1961 from LC-5 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Mercury spacecraft No. 5 carried Ham the Chimp, a chimpanzee, on a suborbital flight, landing in the Atlantic Ocean 16 minutes and 39 seconds after launch.
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John Young (astronaut) John Watts Young (born September 24, 1930) is an American former astronaut, naval officer and aviator, test pilot, and aeronautical engineer, who became the ninth person to walk on the Moon as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972.
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Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module "Eagle" on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours after landing on July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC; Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 lb of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Michael Collins piloted the command module "Columbia" alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moon's surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent just under a day on the lunar surface before rejoining "Columbia" in lunar orbit.
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Daniel W. Bursch Daniel Wheeler Bursch (born July 25, 1957) is a former NASA astronaut, and Captain of the United States Navy. He had four spaceflights, the first three of which were Space Shuttle missions lasting 10 to 11 days each. His fourth and final spaceflight was a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station as a crew member of Expedition 4, which lasted from December 2001 to June 2002. This 196-day mission set a new record for the longest duration spaceflight for an American astronaut, a record simultaneously set with his crew mate Carl Walz. This record has since been broken, and as of 2010 it is held by Michael Lopez-Alegria, who had a 215-day spaceflight as Commander of Expedition 14.
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STS-61 STS-61 was the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle "Endeavour". The mission launched on 2 December 1993 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission restored the spaceborne observatory's vision, marred by spherical aberration, with the installation of a new main camera and a corrective optics package. This correction occurred more than three and a half years after the Hubble was launched aboard STS-31 in April 1990. The flight also brought instrument upgrades and new solar arrays to the telescope. With its very heavy workload, the STS-61 mission was one of the most complex in the Shuttle's history. It lasted almost 11 days, and crew members made five spacewalks (EVAs), an all-time record. Even the re-positioning of Intelsat VI on STS-49 in May 1992 required only four. The flight plan allowed for two additional EVAs, which could have raised the total number to seven. The final two contingency EVAs were not made. In order to complete the mission without too much fatigue, the five extravehicular working sessions were shared between two pairs of different astronauts alternating their shifts.
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Gemini 8 Gemini 8 (officially Gemini VIII) was the sixth manned spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program. The mission conducted the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, but suffered the first critical in-space system failure of a U.S. spacecraft which threatened the lives of the astronauts and required immediate abort of the mission. The crew was returned to Earth safely. The only other time this happened was on the flight of Apollo 13.
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Stephen Robinson Stephen Kern Robinson (born October 26, 1955, in Sacramento, California) is a former NASA astronaut.
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Advanced Gemini Advanced Gemini is a number of proposals that would have extended the Gemini program by the addition of various missions, including manned low Earth orbit, circumlunar and lunar landing missions. Gemini was the second manned spaceflight program operated by NASA, and consisted of a two-seat spacecraft capable of maneuvering in orbit, docking with unmanned spacecraft such as Agena Target Vehicles, and allowing the crew to perform tethered extra-vehicular activities.
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Bernice Steadman Bernice Steadman (1925 – March 18, 2015) was an American professional aviator and businesswoman. Steadman was one of thirteen women chosen to train as astronauts during the early 1960s. The group later became known as the Mercury 13. However, Steadman and the other twelve women in the program were denied the opportunity to become astronauts due to their gender. Steadman, a professional pilot, later co-founded the International Women's Air & Space Museum in Ohio during the 1980s.
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Robert E. Bourdeau Robert Eugene Bourdeau was an American physicist known for major contributions to the study of the ionosphere and plasma physics using space vehicles including satellites and rockets. Among his many achievements was the launch on November 3, 1960 of Explorer 8 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This occurred during his 16 year career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He was both Project Manager and Project Scientist for Explorer 8 which added significant knowledge to the understanding of these fields.
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Jerome Pearson Jerome Pearson (born 1938) is an American engineer and space scientist best known for his work on space elevators, including a lunar space elevator. He is president of STAR, Inc., and has developed aircraft and spacecraft technology for the United States Air Force, DARPA, and NASA. He holds several patents and is the author of nearly 100 publications in aircraft, spacecraft, electrodynamic tethers, SETI, and global climate control.
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Manned Space Flight Network The Manned Space Flight Network (abbreviated MSFN, pronounced ""misfin"") was a set of tracking stations built to support the American Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab space programs.
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Bill Tindall Howard Wilson "Bill" Tindall, Jr. (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 1995) was an American aerospace engineer, NASA engineer and manager. He was an early expert in orbital mechanics and coordinated mission techniques during the Apollo program. In the words of flight director Gene Kranz, Tindall "was pretty much the architect for all of the techniques that we used to go down to the surface of the Moon."