In 1961, America sent its first astronaut into space. 15 minutes later, he was back on Earth

On May 5, 1961, millions of Americans turned on their television sets to watch a journey that would last less time than a morning commute. Alan Shepard was strapped inside a tiny spacecraft called Freedom 7 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, waiting to become the first American to travel into space. An estimated 45 million people watched on television, while around half a million gathered along nearby beaches. Shepard would spend just 15 minutes and 22 seconds in flight, but those few minutes helped change the course of America's space programme.

America Was Already Behind in the Space Race

NASA had selected Shepard as one of its original seven Mercury astronauts in 1959. The goal was clear: put an American in space and bring him safely back to Earth. But the Soviet Union got there first. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space and orbit Earth. America now had even more reason to prove that its own human spaceflight programme was ready. Shepard's mission was not without setbacks. Earlier that year, NASA had sent a chimpanzee named Ham on a similar flight. Problems during that mission led to another uncrewed test before Shepard was cleared to go. Even his planned May 2 launch was postponed because of bad weather.

Alan Shepard Finally Left Earth

Three days later, Shepard climbed back into Freedom 7. More delays followed, leaving him inside the cramped capsule for hours. Finally, at 9:34 am Eastern Time, the Redstone rocket roared to life. President John F. Kennedy watched from the White House as Shepard headed towards space. The flight was very different from Gagarin's full orbit of Earth. Shepard followed a shorter, suborbital path, reaching an altitude of roughly 116 miles. During the mission, he experienced about five minutes of weightlessness and manually controlled the spacecraft's orientation. It was an important test. NASA was not simply trying to send a passenger into space; it needed to know whether a person could actually work and control a spacecraft in that environment.

Fifteen Minutes Later, He Was Back

The return to Earth came quickly. During descent, Shepard experienced forces of up to 11 times Earth's gravity before Freedom 7's parachutes opened and slowed the capsule for splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. The clock stopped at just 15 minutes and 22 seconds after liftoff. Shepard landed about four miles from the recovery ship USS Lake Champlain. Within roughly 20 minutes, both the astronaut and his spacecraft had been recovered. America finally had its first astronaut.

A Short Flight Led to a Much Bigger Goal

Shepard visited the White House three days later, where Kennedy presented him with NASA's Distinguished Service Medal. Then, on May 25, only 20 days after the Freedom 7 flight Kennedy went before Congress and set an extraordinary new goal for the country: land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade was over. NASA achieved it with Apollo 11 in July 1969. Looking back, Shepard's first flight seems remarkably brief. He did not orbit Earth, and he was back on the planet barely a quarter of an hour after leaving it. But sometimes history does not need hours to unfold. Those 15 minutes showed that America's astronauts and spacecraft were ready for what came next: the Moon.