Reflecting the future Worn by John Glenn during the 1962 Mercury mission, the first U.S. orbital space flight Scroll to continue The Mercury suits developed for flights in the 1960s were modeled after the suits worn by military pilots after World War II. The pilots were beginning to fly at higher altitudes and needed a pressurized suit that could keep oxygen flowing and protect the pilots in the case of a high-altitude ejection. The Mercury suits were not designed to operate in the vacuum of space, but rather to help the astronauts in the case of an emergency.

Christian The helmet was designed to be tight fitting so that if the astronaut moved his head, the communications equipment inside the helmet would move with him.

Robin This suit could be from any country, really. You take away the patch there and there is nothing that screams U.S. or that looks particularly patriotic. When I look at it, it seems like it is advertising technology, not advertising patriotism.

Christian The harness that stretches across the chest was used to help secure the astronaut to his seat and hold him tight through the vibrations he would experience in flight.

Robin This silver sets the ground rules for how we imagine spacesuits to be — everything that we think is futuristic is always silver and reflective. Whenever there would be anything related to the future in fashion shows and people imagining what the next century would look like, they always started with metallic fabrics.

Christian The suit was silver for a number of reasons, according to Cathleen Lewis, a curator in the Space History Department of the National Air and Space Museum. First, it would make the astronauts stand out in case they needed to be rescued. It helped reflect sunlight and keep them from heating up, especially in the outer edges of the atmosphere, where the sunlight is unfiltered. Finally, NASA really wanted to set these guys apart from the other pilots with a very space-agey silvery suit.

Christian The gloves are currently stored detached from the suit and not included in the 3-D model. They had lights on the fingertips so that in an emergency, when the lights in the spacecraft went out, they would be able to illuminate the instruments and control panel.

Christian The biometric connector was used to monitor the astronaut’s vital signs — such as heart rate and body temperature — to see how they responded to the conditions of microgravity. At the time, NASA had never sent a person into space and didn’t really have a sense of the effects of space travel on the human body. You could see the nervousness and how scared they were about sending these guys to space in the suit — it looks over engineered, there are all these straps because they worried about anything that could possibly go wrong in an uncharted territory.