50th anniversary of Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 flight. May 5, 2011 — -- Fifty years ago today, astronaut Alan Shepard squeezed into a tiny Mercury capsule and challenged the heavens. He called his ...

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space. Born in 1923, Shepard was a decorated pilot with the United States Navy before he was recruited to become one of the Mercury ...

This video follows Alan Shepard and the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission, the United States’ first manned spaceflight launched just weeks after Gagarin’s historic orbit. Through setbacks, delays, and ...

Inevitably, there are times in a nation's history when its hopes, fears and confidence in its own destiny appear to hinge on the fate of a single person. One of these pivotal moments occurred on the ...

Those were the words Alan Shepard used 60 years ago Wednesday to note his cockpit timepiece had begun running. This meant his Redstone rocket booster had left the ground sending him and his one-man ...

Part 2 explores the dramatically different approaches to the launch systems, and the surprising similarities in the factors ...

SPACE experts in Britain believe that the American spaceman’s short journey out of the earth’s atmosphere last Friday may well be the turning point in the race between the USA and Russia for dominance ...