On the morning of May 5th, 1961, 37-year-old Alan Shepard woke up, ate a breakfast (consisting of a filet mignon wrapped in bacon, scrambled eggs, and orange juice), strapped into the Freedom 7 rocket, and blasted off into space, becoming the first American astronaut to do so.
Shepard’s historic flight — and the first crewed flight of Project Mercury — did two things. It demonstrated that after getting beat to space by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, America was still in the race. And it proved the United States could safely send a human into space and back, helping to restore national confidence during the Cold War. Shepard’s flight only lasted 15 minutes, but it provided enough critical information to serve as a foundation for America’s human spaceflight program in the years to come.
Shepard’s flight only lasted 15 minutes, but it provided enough critical information to serve as a foundation for America’s human spaceflight program in the years to come
Sixty-five years later, the Artemis program is attempting to build off that foundation by proving that humans can not only survive in space, but also build permanent infrastructure and thrive there. The Artemis II mission, which just concluded last month, was a particular high-water mark for human spaceflight, with the crew traveling farther than anyone in the history of the space program.
There have been ups and downs, of course. We’ve lived through enough mission delays, aborted launches, and funding cuts to know that anything we do in space is still constrained by the political and financial realities of what takes place here on the ground. Commercial space companies are not riding to the rescue; their priorities are tourism, satellites, and perhaps orbital data centers. Americans are looking around at rising prices and wondering why so much money is being spent on rocket launches. It’s no longer enough to prove we can go to space. The question now is: Why do we keep going back?
We know that human spaceflight is a remarkable tool for inspiring people to pursue a STEM education. It drives students and engineers and future astronauts to try to solve some of the biggest mysteries in the universe. Ultimately, it’s a desire to explore. These photos from America’s first foray into the human spaceflight program are a good reminder of that instinct.