He was also the second American to fly in space twice, preceded only by Joe Walker with his sub-orbital X-15 flights. As a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, Grissom was the second American to fly in space in 1961.
He was a Project Gemini and an Apollo program astronaut. Virgil Ivan ' Gus' Grissom (Ap– January 27, 1967) was an American engineer, pilot in the United States Air Force, and member of the Mercury Seven selected by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) as Project Mercury astronauts to be the first Americans in outer space.
