Alan B. Shepard, the first American in space

American Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, one of the original seven astronauts for Mercury Project selected by NASA photographed on April 27, 1959. The “Freedom 7” spacecraft boosted by Mercury-Redstone rocket for the MR-3 mission made the first manned suborbital flight and Astronaut Shepard became the first American in space.

This photo shows Shepard and Freedom 7 after recovery. A recovery helicopter that had been watching Freedom 7 lifted Shepard into the helicopter (HMM-262 Seabat), after he splashed down and came out. Both the Freedom 7 and the astronaut were then flown to the deck of the nearby recovery carrier, the USS Lake Champlain. Freedom 7, now on display in the lobby of the Armel-Leftwich Visitor Center, at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, was placed there after Shepard's death in 1998.

Redstone rocket and NASA's Mercury Freedom 7 with Alan Shepard

The above photo is of the May 5, 1961 launch of Redstone rocket and NASA's Mercury Freedom 7 with Alan Shepard on the United States' first manned sub-orbital spaceflight.

Mercury-Redstone 3 was a human crewed space mission launched on May 5, 1961 using a Redstone rocket, from Launch Complex 5 (LC-5) at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Mercury capsule was named “Freedom 7” which performed a suborbital flight piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space as a result of this mission. The flight lasted less than 16 minutes and attained an altitude of just over 187 km.

Unlike the earlier Soviet Vostok 1 flight (of erstwhile USSR, now Russia), Shepard did not orbit the earth, but simply went up and down. Such a launch required a less powerful rocket and simpler guidance. He did, however, become the first astronaut to safely return to Earth inside his vehicle, whereas the Soviet cosmonaut parachuted out of his vehicle prior to landing. The Russian Vostok 1’s passenger Yuri Gagarin was the first human being to go to the space.