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The first of the four plaques on the first tablet. It reads

Mercury Project

Initiated in 1958, completed in 1963, Project Mercury was the United States' first man-in-space program. Over 2,000,000 people from many government agencies and aerospace corporations combining their skills and experience into the national effort.

These objectives of the program, which made six manned flights and 20 unmanned flights from 1961 to 1963, were specific:

• To orbit a manend spacecraft around the earth;
• To investigate man's ability to function in space;
• To recover both man and spacecraft safely.