From Alan Shepard to Artemis, celebrating 65 years of Americans in space

Astronaut Alan Shepard, May 5th, 1961. | Photo by Photo12 / UIG / Getty Images

On the greeting of May 5th, 1961, 37-year-old Alan Shepard woke up, ate a meal (consisting of a filet mignon wrapped successful bacon, scrambled eggs, and orangish juice), strapped into the Freedom 7 rocket, and blasted disconnected into space, becoming the archetypal American astronaut to bash so.

Shepard's historical formation - and the archetypal crewed formation of Project Mercury - did 2 things. It demonstrated that aft getting bushed to abstraction by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, America was inactive successful the race. And it proved the United States could safely nonstop a quality into abstraction and back, helping to reconstruct nationalist assurance during the Cold War. Shepard's formation lone l …

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