Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space

What happened

On 5 May 1961, less than a month after Gagarin's orbital flight, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, riding a Redstone rocket in a Mercury capsule he named Freedom 7. The launch came from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and reached a peak altitude of 116 miles and a downrange distance of 302 miles before Freedom 7 parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean after 15 minutes and 22 seconds, having hit a top speed of 5,180 miles per hour. Unlike Gagarin's mission, Shepard's flight was suborbital: the capsule never achieved a full orbit of Earth, a far less demanding trajectory than the Soviet flight. NASA had selected Shepard three weeks earlier from the Mercury Seven, the agency's first group of astronauts chosen in 1959.

How we know

NASA's history office documents the flight's altitude, duration, and speed from mission telemetry; the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum account of the flight independently corroborates the same figures.

Sources

• NASA History Office. May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard Becomes the First American in Space · Primary source (author-declared)nasa.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. First American In Space: The Flight of Alan B. Shepard · Primary source (author-declared)airandspace.si.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)