In a press conference held 50 years ago today, the newly formed NASA introduced it’s first group of astronauts — the Mercury Seven.

Each became a household name as all but Deke Slayton took turns flying solo missions as part of the Mercury Program. Slayton, who was grounded by medical problems eventually got his turn to fly.

In addition to Slayton, the men are: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, and Alan Shepard.

Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, when his Freedom 7 spacecraft made a suborbital flight.

On February 20, 1962, an Atlas rocket successfully carried Glenn into space on the nation’s first orbital mission.

The men were dubbed “astronauts.” The term was a cross between “aeronauts,” as ballooning pioneers were called, and “Argonauts,” the legendary Greeks in search of the Golden Fleece. These new explorers were being prepared to sail into the new, uncharted vastness of space.

In honor of the anniversary, here are a couple of NASA links:

•   http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/50th_announcement/

•   http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/

NASA celebrates this year’s 50th anniversary with the creation of an educational card game, “You’ve Been Sentenced! - NASA 50th Anniversary Special Edition.” NASA and McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds formed a partnership in April of 2008 to create the game, which bears a few similarities to Scrabble.

NASA and McNeill Designs collaborated to create the Add-on Deck which will present NASA terminology while promoting greater interest and understanding of NASA’s history and future. The 50th Anniversary Special Edition Add-on Deck will contain words not only used in space exploration, but also terminology from the past, current and future explorers, missions, and programs. “You’ve Been Sentenced!” delivers a unique way to understand these terms that is both fun and memorable for students.

“As part of our 50th anniversary celebration, this is an informal and fun venue to educate folks on American’s space program, past and present,” said Gregg Buckingham, chief, Education Programs and University Research Division at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “We will also learn more about the effectiveness of this kind of education tool from McNeill.”

The purpose of this project is to build a strategic partnership among informal education providers, community groups, formal educators and families to promote literacy, particularly focusing in the areas of space, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The game “You’ve Been Sentenced!” can be used in classrooms to aid educators in teaching curriculum based upon space and space exploration at NASA.

For additional information about “You’ve Been Sentenced! - NASA 50th Anniversary Special Edition” and McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds, visit: http://www.mcneilbrighterminds.com.

WASHINGTON — The winners of NASA’s 50th Anniversary Essay Competition have been selected.

The international competition challenged middle school and junior high students to discuss, in an essay of 500 words or less, one of two topics: how they have benefitted in their everyday lives from aerospace technologies built by NASA during the past 50 years, or, how their lives may be different 50 years in the future because of NASA technology.

Jackson Warley of the Renaissance Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., took first prize. The seventh grader will receive a $5,000 college scholarship and a trip to view a space shuttle launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In his essay, Jackson wrote “the underlying spirit and principles of NASA . . . heeds the basic human calling to explore the unknown and in doing so, gives people motivation.”

Second prize and a $2,500 college scholarship went to Grace Nowadly, a student at Berkeley Middle School in Williamsburg, Va. Megha Subramanian of Hershey Middle School in Hershey, Pa., won third prize and a $1,000 college scholarship.

“NASA is proud to recognize the winners of the 50th anniversary essay competition. This competition has generated excitement among the participating students as they learned about how America’s space program impacts their lives in very powerful ways,” NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said. “The goal is to spark students’ imagination in science, math, and engineering and I think we’ve achieved that goal with these exceptional students.”

To read the winning essays, and see a list of regional winners, visit http://ipp.nasa.gov/essay.htm.

More than 1,000 submissions from 37 states and 15 countries were entered into the competition. NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program and NASA’s Office of Education conducted the competition. To learn more about NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program and the benefits of NASA-derived technology, visit http://ipp.nasa.gov.