On May 5, 1961 NASA astronaut Alan Shepard launched in his Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 to become the first American in space.
The Soviet Union had beaten the Americans to space a month earlier with the Vostok 1 flight of Yuri Gagarin.
Shepard’s achievement was much more modest than that of Gagarin, who attained complete Earth orbit and stayed aloft for 108 minutes. Shepard’s Mercury spacecraft made it only to suborbital space, reaching a peak altitude of 116 miles and a top speed of 5,180 mph. The flight lasted just 15 minutes before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean 302 miles from the Florida launch site.
The U.S. wouldn’t duplicate Gagarin’s feat for nearly a year, until John Glenn’s orbital flight in February 1962.
