Portal:Spaceflight/Selected article/Week 19 2008

Mercury-Redstone 3 was a US Project Mercury manned space mission launched on 5 May 1961 using a Redstone rocket, from Launch Complex 5 (LC-5) at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Mercury capsule was named Freedom 7 and it performed a suborbital flight, piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard&mdash;the first American in space. The flight lasted less than 16 minutes and attained an altitude of just over 187 km.

Unlike the earlier Soviet Vostok 1 flight, Shepard did not orbit the earth but simply went up and down which requires a less powerful rocket and simpler guidance. He did however become the first astronaut to return to Earth with his ship, while the Russian cosmonaut parachuted away from his during landing. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev criticised Freedom 7 as a mere 'flea hop' compared to the recent flight of Vostok 1 and its passenger Yuri Gagarin. (more...)