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 ...

In May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, a short suborbital mission that proved humans could survive launch, weightlessness, and reentry. Behind the calm headlines was Project ...

“Not bad for an old man!” Capcom Bruce McCandless ribbed Alan Shepard, one of America's first 7 astronauts, moments after he ...

Alan Shepard’s playful experiment captured something equally important about exploration: the unmistakably human urge to improvise, joke, and celebrate achievement, even 3,80,000 kilometers from Earth ...

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 ...

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 ...