He'd been selected in January 1961 as the primary pilot for Mercury Redstone 4, with John Glenn as his backup. The US was still smarting at being beaten to put the first man in orbit by the ...

Grissom launched in the Mercury-Redstone 4 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 21, 1961. On July 21, 1961, the Mercury-Redstone 4 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida into ...

Atop the rocket was a tiny capsule less than 7 ft (2 m) tall. As it rose into the sky at 9:34 am EST, Mercury Redstone 3 carried Alan Shepard on a 15-minute flight to become America's first man in ...

Here’s how it works. On May 5, 1961, NASA launched the Mercury Redstone 3 rocket to make Alan Shepard the first American in space on the historic Freedom 7 mission. See some amazing vintage ...

Astronaut Alan Shepard in his pressure suit, for the Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) flight, the first American manned space flight. On May 5, 1961, Shepard piloted the Freedom 7 mission and became the ...

On March 24, 1961, NASA's Mercury Redstone rocket launched on its last uncrewed flight before it started sending astronauts into space. The mission was known as the Mercury Redstone Booster ...

Powered by a Redstone booster, Shepard's flight, part of Project Mercury, lasted all of 15 minutes and 28 seconds. Project Mercury, which ran from 1959 through 1963, had the singular goal of ...