NASA

Moonwalker

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut is the first man from USA to go to space.

First Man from USA

Moon Flyer

Apollo 14

Apollo 14 returned the Apollo program to flight following a nine-month stand down to investigate and fix the critical issues that led to the in-flight failures on Apollo 13. Apollo 14 marked the return to spaceflight of the first American in space, Alan Shepard. He and Mitchell spent over 33 hours on the Moon's surface, conducting moonwalks, collecting samples, and performing experiments. They landed at the site Apollo 13 was intended to have explored. From lunar orbit, Roosa photographed the planned landing site for Apollo 16. The mission returned the the oldest known Earth rock from the Moon, dating back 4 billion years. This was the first mission to use a single-color suit for one crewmember and a suit with red stripes for the other to allow visual ID of which astronaut was who during moonwalks. Use of the red stripe has been continued on every U.S. moon- and spacewalk since and has been adopted by Russia as well.

The main Apollo spacecraft was a Command and Service Module designed to take three astronauts to and from the Moon’s orbit and provide access to the lunar lander during missions. After the Moon program ended, Apollo spacecraft flew three crews to the Skylab space station and performed the historic joint U.S.-Soviet mission in 1975.

Apollo

Mercury-Redstone 3 (Freedom 7)

The first U.S. human spaceflight. The mission was suborbital, taking one person to 187.5 km and then splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean 15 minutes 22 seconds after liftoff. During the flight the capsule control systems were tested and the astronaut's ability to withstand the G-forces of launch and reentry was confirmed.

The Mercury capsule was the United States' first human spacecraft. Built without onboard computers, all flight calculations had to be determined on the ground and radioed up to each crew member. The spacecraft performed two suborbital and four orbital human missions and proved that people could live in space for multiple days.

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