Fifty years ago today, (May 5, 1961), Mercury 3 or Freedom 7 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Alan B. Shepard, Jr. became the first American astronaut to journey to space in a sub-orbital flight to height 117-miles and down range of 300-miles in the Atlantic ocean. His flight took 15 minutes of which was 5 minutes of weightlessness to set America into space following the 12 April, 1961 launch of Russian Yuri Gagarin to orbit.
NASA Astronaut Shepard later flew to space again as the commander of Apollo 14 landing on the Moon at Fra Maru 5 February 1971 to become the fifth human to walk the lunar surface.
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