NASA Honours Alan Shepard as It Celebrates 60th Anniversary of First American in Space

NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space 60 years ago on May 5. The space research organisation honoured Shepard and his mission with a special page on its website. The year 1961 was extremely crucial as the United States and the Soviet Union — the two dominant superpowers at the time — were locked in a race to send the first human to space. With the Soviet Union launching the first artificial satellite called Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, it sparked an unexplored frontier in the Cold War — space. NASA was formed a year later, and on May 5, 1961, Shepard became the first American in space during a suborbital flight aboard his Mercury capsule, Freedom 7.

On Thursday, NASA shared a photo of Shephard on Twitter and wrote: “60 years ago today, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel in space, climbing 116 miles (188 km) above Earth. Shortly after, President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to a lunar landing before the end of the decade.”

On its website, NASA stated that the US began working on Project Mercury in 1958 and selected its first batch of astronauts a year later to train them…