The first US citizen – and only the second human being – ever to travel into space was Alan Shepard, a US astronaut with a background in naval aviation.
In 1961 Alan Shepard made up the entire one-man crew of the NASA spacecraft Mercury-Redstone 3 (or ‘Freedom 7’ as it was nicknamed by Shepard), and on May 5th became the first American to journey into space.
Shepard and the Mercury 7
Alan Shepard was born in New Hampshire in 1923.
He saw active service with the US Navy during World War Two, but didn’t begin training as a naval pilot until after the war, in 1947, become a test pilot in 1950.
In 1959, he was selected by NASA as one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.
All of the ‘Mercury Seven’ would eventually fly into space, but it was Shepard who got the first crack of the whip, landing the plum job of piloting Mercury-Redstone 3 into suborbital space.
The main intention here was to see whether a human being could withstand the extremely high G-forces experienced both during a rocket launch, and upon a capsule’s re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Obviously, we know now that the answer is “Yes, they can” – but that was by no means a given when Shepard signed on for the mission.
Alan Shepard in space
Three weeks before he actually blasted off, though, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin beat him to the title of first human in space by orbiting the Earth in the Vostok 1 spacecraft.
It’s easy to see how, to Shepard, this must have come as both a huge disappointment, and a great relief!
Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5th 1961 when his Freedom 7 spacecraft was launched by a Mercury-Redstone rocket.
He flew to an altitude of 116 statute miles during the 15-minute suborbital flight.
Further scheduled flights in 1961 and 1963 were cancelled for various reasons.
But Alan Shepard would return to space in 1971, when he commanded the Apollo 14 mission and became, at the age of 47, the oldest person ever to walk on the Moon.
Later life
After his moonlanding, Shepard was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and made Chief of the Astronaut Office and, later, a rear admiral.
He retired from both NASA and the US Navy in 1974.
In later life, Shepard served on the board of several corporations and the National Space Institute, as well as the Houston School for Deaf Children, and had extensive business interests in banking and real estate.
He co-authored the book Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon with fellow Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton in 1994, before passing away from leukaemia in 1998.
As an interesting coda… some 23 years after his death, Shepard’s daughter Laura Shepard Churchley also went into space, as a tourist onboard the private space mission Blue Origin NS-19.
The NS part of the name stands for ‘New Shepard’ – a fitting tribute for a man who really did boldly go where (almost) no one had gone before.
Pictures of Alan Shepard
