From Alan Shepard to Artemis, celebrating 65 years of Americans in space

On the morning of May 5, 1961, 37-year-old Alan Shepard woke up, ate breakfast (of filet mignon wrapped in bacon, scrambled eggs, and orange juice), strapped into a Freedom 7 rocket, and blasted off into space, becoming the first American astronaut to do so.

Shepard’s historic flight — and Project Mercury’s first manned flight — did two things. It showed that after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin conquered space, America was still in the race. It proved that the United States was capable of safely sending a human into space and back, helping to restore national confidence during the Cold War. Shepard’s flight lasted only 15 minutes, but provided enough important information to serve as the foundation for America’s human spaceflight program in the coming years.

Sixty-five years later, the Artemis program is trying to build on that foundation by proving that humans can not only survive in space; Building permanent infrastructure And thrive there. The Artemis 2 mission, which just concluded last month, marked a special milestone for human spaceflight, as the crew… Further than anyone in history From the space program.

There have been ups and downs, of course. We have lived enough Task delaysaborted launches, and Funding cuts To know that anything we do in space is still constrained by the political and financial reality of what happens here on Earth. Commercial space companies are not rushing to the rescue; Their priorities are Tourism, SatellitesAnd maybe Orbital data centers. Americans look around at the rising prices and wonder why all this money is being spent on launching missiles. It is no longer enough to prove that we can go into space. The question now is: Why do we keep coming back?

We know that human spaceflight is a great tool to inspire people to pursue a STEM education. It pushes future students, engineers, and astronauts to try to solve some of the biggest mysteries in the universe. Ultimately, it’s the desire to explore. These photos from America’s first foray into a human spaceflight program are a good reminder of this instinct.