Mercury-Redstone 3 was the first manned space mission of the United States. Astronaut Alan Shepard piloted a 15-minute Project Mercury suborbital flight in the Freedom 7 spacecraft on May 5, 1961 to become the first American in space, three weeks after the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had carried out the first orbital spaceflight.
The capsule, launched on a Redstone rocket from Launch Complex 5 (LC-5) at Cape Canaveral, Florida, reached an altitude of 116.5 miles (187.5 km) before falling back on a ballistic trajectory and splashing down 303 miles (488 km) away from the launch pad, off the Bahamas. During the flight, Shepard observed the Earth and tested the reaction control system of the spacecraft. Earth photos were taken by an automatic camera mounted in the spacecraft's window.
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