Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space
On this day · 5 May 1961
On May 5, 1961, a 15-minute hop above the Atlantic turned a test pilot into the first American to ride a rocket past the edge of space.
On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard squeezed into a cramped capsule he had named Freedom 7 and let a Redstone rocket fling him off Cape Canaveral. The flight was suborbital, not a lap of the planet, but it counted: he became the first American in space.
The whole ride lasted about 15 minutes, arcing 116 miles high before splashing down some 300 miles downrange. Shepard was awake, in control, and flying the spacecraft by hand for part of the trip, a pointed contrast to the Soviets’ automated capsules.
The Soviet Union had beaten him by just 25 days, with Yuri Gagarin’s orbit on April 12.
That narrow loss stung, but Shepard’s success gave Washington its nerve back. Within three weeks, President Kennedy stood before Congress and committed the nation to landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out. A quarter-hour above the Atlantic, it turned out, was enough to aim a country at the Moon.
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