Alan Shepard became the first American in space during NASA’s Freedom 7 mission on 5 May 1961.
Shepard flew aboard a Mercury-Redstone 3 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. His suborbital flight lasted about 15 minutes and reached an altitude of roughly 187 kilometers before his capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean.
The mission followed Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight by less than a month, so Shepard was the second human to travel into space, not the first. His flight nevertheless demonstrated that the United States could launch and recover a human safely.
John Glenn later became the first American to orbit Earth, flying aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962. Shepard eventually returned to space as commander of Apollo 14 and became the fifth person to walk on the Moon.