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May 5, 1961: Launch of Freedom 7 At 9:34 a.m., Alan Shepard became the first American in space as Mercury 3 lifted off from Cape Canaveral . Shepard's spacecraft Freedom 7, first of the Mercury program , reached an altitude of 115 miles (185 km) without achieving orbit, and was recovered 19 minutes later by the aircraft carrier USS Lake ...
In the museum is an exhibit about a slightly different version of Mercury-Redstone 3/Freedom 7 called Defiance 7 that launched on May 5, 1961 (the day Freedom 7 was launched) and was piloted by fictional astronaut Carl Bell. The exhibit states that Bell was the first human in space in this timeline and did not survive the space flight, having ...
1961 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1961st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 961st year of the 2nd millennium, the 61st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1960s decade.
1961 – Project Mercury: Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight. 1964 – The Council of Europe declares May 5 as Europe Day. 1972 – Alitalia Flight 112 crashes into Mount Longa near Palermo, Sicily, killing all 115 aboard, making it the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in Italy.
May 5 – Mercury program: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space aboard Mercury-Redstone 3. May 9 – In a speech on "Television and the Public Interest" to the National Association of Broadcasters, FCC chairman Newton N. Minow describes commercial television programming as a "vast wasteland".
May 5 – Alan Shepard is launched on Freedom 7 on a sub-orbital spaceflight aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket, and becomes the first American in outer space. The flight lasts 15 minutes 22 seconds, and reaches an apogee of 187.42 kilometres (116.46 mi), and a maximum speed of 8,277 kilometres per hour (5,143 mph) (Mach 6.94).
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Alan Shepard became the first American in space on a suborbital flight three weeks later, on May 5, 1961. [138] John Glenn, the third Mercury astronaut to fly, became the first American to reach orbit on February 20, 1962, but only after the Soviets had launched a second cosmonaut, Gherman Titov , into a day-long flight in August 1961. [ 220 ]