events
Project Mercury: Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight.
Related Wikipedia articles
Project Mercury
Initial American crewed spaceflight program (1958–1963)
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the U.S. Air…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Alan Shepard
American astronaut and lunar explorer (1923–1998)
Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was an American astronaut. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the Moon, at age 47.Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Mercury-Redstone 3
First United States human spaceflight (1961)
Mercury-Redstone 3, or Freedom 7, was the first United States human spaceflight, on May 5, 1961, piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard. It was the first crewed flight of Project Mercury. The project had the ultimate objective of putting an astronaut into orbit around the Earth and…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)