Alan Shepard, first American in space, nearly beat Gagarin

Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, riding his Mercury capsule Freedom 7 on a 15-minute, 22-second suborbital flight that reached 116 miles high and splashed down about 300 miles from Cape Canaveral.

He was the second human in space. Yuri Gagarin had orbited Earth on April 12, which is 23 days earlier. Some accounts, including the Smithsonian’s, say 25 days, but counting from April 12 to May 5 gives 23.

And Shepard might have flown first, in March. On January 31, the chimpanzee Ham tested the same Redstone rocket and capsule, but the booster failed to cut off on time, triggering the capsule’s escape system. Wernher von Braun’s team at the Marshall Space Flight Center insisted on another uncrewed test. Mercury’s managers and the astronauts saw that as over-caution, but NASA headquarters sided with Marshall, judging that losing an astronaut would be worse than losing the race. The extra test, MR-BD, flew flawlessly on March 24, and less than three weeks later Gagarin launched.

Shepard’s own launch day was long. He sat in the capsule through more than two hours of holds and allegedly told controllers:

“Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”

An estimated 45 million Americans watched on television. In flight, Shepard took manual control of his spacecraft’s orientation, and the “7” in Freedom 7 honoured all seven Mercury astronauts.

Three weeks later, President Kennedy asked Congress to commit to a Moon landing. Fame proved fleeting: John Glenn’s orbit in February 1962 eclipsed the suborbital flights in the public mind. Grounded for years by an inner-ear disorder, Shepard returned to fly as commander of Apollo 14, the only Mercury astronaut to reach the Moon.