This program put the first american in space

Out of the seven astronauts chosen for the program, Alan Shepard, Jr. Of those three, Shepard was chosen to launch the Freedom 7. Mercury had two boosters used to lift the spacecraft and two mission profiles, one of which was to conduct these early flights. The Freedom 7 was launched in a smaller Redstone rocket and could be classified as just a suborbital hop, in preparation for the Mercury mission to put a man in orbit, which Glenn would do in February of But with its success, Shepard became the first American in space.

After corrective surgery, Shepard was put back on flight status and became commander of Apollo 14, which successfully landed on the Fra Mauro highlands section of the Moon in February He would be the only astronaut from the Mercury program to land on the Moon. The purpose of the mission was to collect lunar samples from this volcanic area on the moon in an effort to help scientists understand the history of the moon and the solar system.

The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA.

NASA was established in to keep U. In the late s and early s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, , the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth.

NASA continued to trail the Soviets closely until the late s and the successes of the Apollo lunar program. In July , the Americans took a giant leap forward with Apollo 11 , a three-stage spacecraft that took U.

On February 5, , Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Young strikes out eight of the 27 batters he faces and benefits from excellent defense in a game that is On May 5, , a date of symbolic importance to its iconic creator, the perfume Chanel No.

The new fragrance immediately revolutionized the perfume industry and remained popular for a century. Napoleon Bonaparte, the former French ruler who once ruled an empire that stretched across Europe, dies as a British prisoner on the remote island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

Of the 62 pilots who volunteered, six were found to have grown too tall since their last medical examination. An initial battery of written tests, interviews, and medical history reviews further reduced the number of candidates to After learning of the extreme physical and mental tests planned for them, four of these men dropped out.

The final 32 candidates traveled to the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico , where they underwent exhaustive medical and psychological examinations. The men proved so healthy, however, that only one candidate was eliminated. The remaining 31 candidates then traveled to the Wright Aeromedical Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio , where they underwent the most grueling part of the selection process. For six days and three nights, the men were subjected to various tortures that tested their tolerance of physical and psychological stress.

Among other tests, the candidates were forced to spend an hour in a pressure chamber that simulated an altitude of 65, feet, and two hours in a chamber that was heated to degrees Fahrenheit. At the end of one week, 18 candidates remained. From among these men, the selection committee was to choose six based on interviews, but seven candidates were so strong they ended up settling on that number.

Less than one month later, on May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard was successfully launched into space on a suborbital flight. On February 20, , in a major step for the U. In , 36 years after his first space flight, John Glenn traveled into space again. Glenn, then 77 years old, was part of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew, whose 9-day research mission launched on October 29, But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

The so-called Journey of Reconciliation, which lasted Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico in and grew up in Long Island, New York, began acting at a young age, landing her first