Project Mercury began in October 1958, with the objective of achieving the first human spaceflight. The project was an important part of the early Space Race, in which the USSR had already beaten the United States to put the first satellite into orbit. By this time Shepard had proved himself to be a skilled military test pilot, and in 1959 he was chosen to become one of the original ‘Mercury Seven’ astronauts for the human spaceflight program.

Having developed a single-person capsule and a launch vehicle rocket known as Mercury-Redstone, testing began with MR-1 in November 1960 that was aborted at liftoff due to an electrical fault. The subsequent MR-2 mission crewed by Ham the chimpanzee experienced technical problems that prompted major alterations to the spacecraft. As a result the first crewed mission, formally known as Mercury-Redstone 3, had to be postponed.

While NASA resolved the remaining technical problems, Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union became the first human to travel in space on 12 April 1961. Less than a month later, and after two further delays caused by inclement weather, Alan Shepard boarded the capsule he had named Freedom 7 to become the first American in space.

In front of an estimated television audience of 45 million people, lifted off at 9:34 am. The flight lasted for 15 minutes and 22 seconds and reached a maximum altitude of 116 miles before returning to earth for splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Shepard was celebrated as a national hero and later served as Commander of the Apollo 14 mission, when he became the fifth person to walk on the moon.

свернуть