United States Astronaut Hall of Fame

Exhibits include Wally Schirra's Sigma 7 space capsule from the fifth crewed Mercury mission and the Gemini IX spacecraft flown by Gene Cernan and Thomas P. Stafford in 1966.

In the 1980s, the six then-surviving Mercury Seven astronauts conceived of establishing a place where US space travelers could be remembered and honored, along the lines of halls of fame for other fields.

The Astronaut Hall of Fame was opened on October 29, 1990, by the U.S. Space Camp Foundation, which was the first owner of the facility.

[2] The Hall of Fame closed for several months in 2002 when U.S. Space Camp Foundation's creditors foreclosed on the property due to low attendance and mounting debt.

[4] The Hall of Fame, which was originally located just west of the NASA Causeway, closed to the public on November 2, 2015, in preparation for its relocation to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east on Merritt Island.

In July 2020, Lockheed Martin announced it would lease the building to support work on the NASA Orion crew capsule.

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth and after his induction went on, in 1998, to become the oldest man to fly in space, aged 77.

Notable members of the class were Roger Chaffee, the third astronaut killed in the Apollo 1 fire and the only unflown astronaut in the Hall; Harrison Schmitt, the first scientist and next-to-last person to walk on the Moon; and Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 crewmembers not previously inducted.

The third group of inductees would include those astronauts who began their spaceflight careers during Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP (some of whom would go on to fly in the Space Shuttle program).

[14] Bonnie Dunbar, Curt Brown and Eileen Collins were inducted in 2013,[15] and Shannon Lucid and Jerry Ross comprised the 2014 class.

Among the Hall of Fame's displays is Sigma 7, the Mercury spacecraft piloted by Wally Schirra which orbited the Earth six times in 1962, and the Gemini 9A capsule flown by Gene Cernan and Thomas P. Stafford in 1966.