Alan Shepard was the first American to travel into space, flying aboard Freedom 7 in 1961.
Shepard launched on May 5, 1961, during Project Mercury. His Mercury-Redstone 3 mission was a suborbital flight, meaning the spacecraft reached space but did not complete an orbit of Earth. The flight lasted about 15 minutes and reached an altitude of roughly 187 kilometres.
The mission came less than a month after Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Shepard’s success gave the United States an important early achievement in the Space Race and helped prepare NASA for longer and more complex missions.
Shepard is sometimes confused with John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit Earth later in 1962. Shepard later commanded Apollo 14 and became the fifth person to walk on the Moon.