The crew of Gemini 5 completed 120 orbits of the earth or, as LCDR Conrad put it, "8 days in a garbage can", due to the small interior of the module (about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle).

Apollo 7 was the first US mission to carry three men into outer space. Navy Captain Walter M. Schirra, Jr. was at the controls for its 10 days of orbiting around the earth. The public, including sailors, watch as the ship prepares to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 34.

The command module of Gemini 5 is hoisted aboard USS Lake Champlain after splashdown on 5 August 1965.

Scott Carpenter joined the Navy in 1949 where he served as a pilot. In 1959, he was selected as one of the original seven astronauts for Project Mercury. He was the second man to orbit the earth on 24 May 1962 with Mercury 7. In 1965, he participated in the Navy's SEALAB II project.

A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Class of 1944, Alan Shepard became a pilot and served as a test pilot at Patuxent Naval Air Station, later becoming an instructor. In 1959, he was one of the first seven astronauts selected for Project Mercury. In May 1961, he became the first American in space - the second human after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin achieved that feat a month earlier. He returned to space in Apollo 14 and in that mission became the fifth person to walk on the moon and first to hit a golf ball on the moon.