Mercury-Redstone 3 (Freedom 7)

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Mercury-Redstone 3 made Alan Shepard the first American in space, just three weeks after Gagarin's flight. On 5 May 1961 Shepard squeezed into the cramped Mercury capsule he had named Freedom 7 and rode a Redstone rocket on a fifteen-minute suborbital arc from Cape Canaveral, climbing to about 187 kilometres before falling back to a splashdown some 480 kilometres out in the Atlantic, where a helicopter lifted him to a waiting carrier. It was a far shorter hop than Gagarin's full orbit, but it carried a deliberate difference: where Vostok flew automatically, Shepard took manual control of his craft's attitude, showing that a pilot could fly a spacecraft by hand. The flight was watched live on television by millions of Americans who had grown anxious at a string of Soviet firsts, and its success — modest as it was beside Gagarin's — gave the young space programme a surge of confidence. Twenty days later, emboldened in part by Shepard's flight, President Kennedy stood before Congress and committed the nation to landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out. Shepard himself was grounded for years by an inner-ear ailment, but he recovered, and in 1971 he commanded Apollo 14 and walked on the lunar surface — the only one of the original Mercury Seven to do so, famously hitting two golf balls across the Moon. Freedom 7 had opened the door, and the man who flew it lived to step through it onto another world.

1. 1961Launch on a RedstoneLaunch

   A Mercury-Redstone lifts Freedom 7 from Cape Canaveral on a suborbital arc.

2. 1961First American in spaceMilestone

   Alan Shepard reaches about 187 km and flies the capsule by hand, unlike the automated Vostok.

3. 1961Atlantic splashdownSplashdown

   After fifteen minutes and some 480 km downrange, a helicopter recovers Shepard and Freedom 7.

4. 1961Kennedy commits to the MoonMilestone

   Twenty days later, President Kennedy sets the goal of a crewed Moon landing within the decade.

Images

Images from open archives · credit shown per image