Since the idea of space flights took on a real shape, the achievement of other planets has become the dream of mankind. The implementation of this task turned out to be difficult, but the first step was taken - people managed to land on the moon, the closest cosmic body to the Earth.
The honor of landing on the moon belongs to American astronauts. Speaking about this event, they usually recall Neil Armstrong - the man who first stepped onto the surface of the Moon and uttered the historical phrase about "a small step for man and a huge leap for all of humanity."
But after the first flight of people to the moon was followed by a second, third. In total, six such expeditions were made, and each of them is remarkable in its own way.
Astronaut Alan Shepard
American astronaut Alan Shepard is a man with an amazing fate. He had a chance to become the first man in space.
At the end of the 50s. In the 20th century, the United States clearly lagged behind the USSR in space exploration. This was not only of military significance. It was clear that sending man into space in the Soviet Union was a matter of near future. "From a propaganda point of view, one person in space is worth a dozen ballistic missiles, " the New York Herald Tribune newspaper wrote.
In the United States, everything was done to ensure that the first person in space became a citizen of this country. In 1959, seven high-profile pilots were selected to participate in a special program called Mercury, and among them was a test pilot, naval officer Alan Shepard.
Among the participants in the Mercury program, A. Shepard was the best, it was he who, on May 5, 1961, went into space on the Mercury Redstone-3 spacecraft capsule. He did not become the first man in space - he was ahead of the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, but he became the first astronaut in the United States.
