Question: Who was the American astronaut that was part of Project Mercury who carried an 8-note Hohner harmonica and a handful of small bells aboard a Gemini 6A rocket ship?
Context: The Gemini Giant is a landmark statue on U.S. Route 66 at the Eastern entrance to Wilmington, Will County, Illinois.  Standing outside the Launching Pad Drive-In restaurant, the 30 foot tall statue is one of many giant "Muffler Man" advertising props found throughout the USA in the Sixties.  The Gemini Giant is named after the Gemini space program and holds a silver "rocket ship" in his hands, while sporting an astronaut's space helmet that resembles a welding mask. Music in space is music played in or broadcast from a spacecraft in outer space.  The Smithsonian Institution claims that the first musical instruments played in outer space were an 8-note Hohner "Little Lady" harmonica and a handful of small bells carried by American astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford aboard Gemini 6A.  Upon achieving a space rendezvous in Earth orbit with their sister sister ship Gemini 7 in December 1965, Schirra and Stafford played a rendition of "Jingle Bells" over the radio after jokingly claiming to have seen an unidentified flying object piloted by Santa Claus.  The harmonica was donated to the Smithsonian by Schirra in 1967, with his note that it "...plays quite well". Vernon Leslie Grose (born June 27, 1928) is an American author, professor, aerospace engineer, air disaster analyst, risk management expert, and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).  In 1969, he was appointed to NASA's Safety Advisory Group for Space Flight.  In 1974, he was honored with NASA's Silver Snoopy Award, presented by Brigadier General Thomas P. Stafford, veteran astronaut of the Gemini 6A, Gemini 9A, and Apollo 10 space programs. Maa Ghanteshwari temple is a temple located in Chiplima which is 30 K.M distance from Sambalpur city via NH 6 in Orissa, India as of now.  A bridge is under construction at Mundoghat a strategically important place between Sambalpur and Chiplima expected to fully functional till the last of 2018.  It will reduce the distance between Maa Ghanteswari Temple and Sambalpur to half.  As the name suggests there are bells everywhere.  People offer bells to goddess Ghanteswari or the Deity of Bells, after fulfillment of their wishes.  A large number of pilgrims from across the state visit the temple.  It is known as the 'lighthouse without light', built by the early sailors, for whom the bells served as warning against heavy winds.  The special significance of this place lies in the great number of small bells hanging all around. USNS "Wally Schirra" (T-AKE-8) is a "Lewis and Clark"-class dry cargo ship of the United States Navy, named in honor of Captain Wally Schirra (1923–2007), one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, who flew three times in space, on Mercury 8, Gemini 6A, and Apollo 7. The Mercury Control Center (also known as building 1385 or simply MCC) provided control and coordination of all activities associated with the NASA's Project Mercury flight operation as well as the first Project Gemini flight, Gemini 3.  It was located on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station near Launch Complex 14. Gemini 2 (Gemini-Titan 2; GT-2) was the second spaceflight of the American human spaceflight program Project Gemini.  Gemini 2, like Gemini 1, was an unmanned mission intended as a test flight of the Gemini spacecraft.  Unlike Gemini 1, which was placed into orbit, Gemini 2 made a suborbital flight, primarily intended to test the spacecraft's heat shield.  It was launched on a Titan II GLV rocket.  The spacecraft used for the Gemini 2 mission was later refurbished, and was subsequently launched on another suborbital flight, along with OPS 0855, as a test for the US Air Force Manned Orbital Laboratory.  Gemini 2 was the first craft to make more than one spaceflight since the X-15, and the only one until Space Shuttle "Columbia" flew its second mission in 1981. Walter Marty "Wally" Schirra Jr. (March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007), (CAPT, USN), was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, United States first effort to put humans in space.  He flew the six-orbit, nine-hour Mercury-Atlas 8 mission on October 3, 1962, becoming the fifth American, and the ninth human, to ride a rocket into space.  In the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 ft of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965.  In October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, an 11-day low Earth orbit shakedown test of the three-man Apollo Command/Service Module.  He was the first person to go into space three times, and the only person to have flown in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, logging a total of 295 hours and 15 minutes in space.  He retired from the U.S. Navy at the rank of Captain and from NASA after his Apollo flight, becoming a consultant to CBS News for its coverage of the subsequent Apollo flights.  He joined Walter Cronkite as co-anchor for the seven Moon landing missions. With rare exceptions, rockets are expendable, so rockets in displays have not been flown.  As in the case of the Saturn V, later planned missions were cancelled, leaving unneeded rockets for the museums.  For displays of early American space hardware, such as Project Mercury and Project Gemini, surplus missiles have been painted to look like manned space launch vehicles.  Engineering test articles (such as the "Pathfinder" space shuttle stack in Huntsville) or purpose-built full-scale replicas are also displayed in rocket gardens. Joe Filisko is an American blues harmonica player and maker of customized harmonicas based in Chicago, Illinois.  In 2001 he was named "Harmonica Player of the Year" by the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica.  In addition to performing, and building customized harmonicas, he also teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music.  The Hohner harmonica company describes him as the world's foremost authority on the diatonic harmonica.  He designed the distinctive conical cover plates of the Hohner Marine Band Thunderbird harmonicas.
Answer: Wally Schirra