Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., posing here in his Mercury flight suit, was born in New Hampshire in 1923. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944, he served in World War II and became a Navy test pilot.
Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., posing here in his Mercury flight suit, was born in New Hampshire in 1923. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944, he served in World War II and became a Navy test pilot. Of NASA’s choice of test pilots, Shepard said, ”If you were going to put a pilot in it, it was going to have to fly somehow … when you have a strange new machine, then you go to the test pilots.”
His May 5, 1961, launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a suborbital mission was the first U.S. manned spaceflight.Photo Credit: NASA