Shepard History

On May 5, 1961, a 4,000lb Mercury capsule (MR-3), Freedom 7, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the nose of a Redstone rocket. Navy Commander Alan B. Shepard became the first American astronaut, reaching the fringes of space in a suborbital flight that carried him 116 miles up at a maximum speed of 5,100mph. The flight of Freedom 7 was an important one in the Mercury Project, a project intended to culminate in a successful manned orbital flight. Thus far, the American space program lagged behind the Soviet program. Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had already orbited the Earth once in Vostok 1 on April 12 of the same year. The Americans were anxious to send an astronaut into orbital flight as soon as possible. Shepard's suborbital flight, and Virgil Grissom's later suborbital flight in the Liberty Bell, were cautious but necessary steps in achieving that goal. The flight of Freedom 7 was counted a complete success. The firing of the Redstone rocket and separation of rocket from capsule went exactly as planned. Shepard tested the manual controls of the capsule and verified his ability to control pitch, yaw and roll of the craft. He experienced five minutes of weightlessness at maximum altitude with no ill effects, before firing retro-rockets to slow Freedom 7 and maneuvering the capsule into reentry attitude. As the capsule entered the atmosphere Shepard rapidly went from weightlessness to a gravity of 10G's, or ten times that experienced on Earth. A parachute slowed the capsule's descent to the Atlantic Ocean, and fifteen minutes after launch Shepard and Freedom 7 were picked up by helicopter.