The three names were announced to the press on February 22 without any indication as to which of the three was expected to fly the mission. He had selected Alan Shepard as the primary pilot, with John Glenn and Gus Grissom as his backups the other members of the Mercury Seven continued to train for later missions. The pilot for MR-3 had been chosen several months in advance, in early January, by the head of the program, Robert R. The MR-BD flight was almost completely successful, ensuring that the crewed MR-3 flight could proceed without further significant delay. This would launch on March 28, pushing the MR-3 flight back a month to April 25. An additional testing flight was accordingly added to the schedule, MR-BD (for "Booster Development" it was originally known as MR-2A). As a result, NASA was unwilling to launch the MR-3 mission without further development work by late February, there were still seven major alterations they had made to the booster which required testing. The splashdown point was sixty miles from the nearest recovery ship, and it was over two and a half hours before a helicopter could recover the capsule and its passenger - by which time it had almost sunk. As a result, the mission was two minutes longer than planned, and the re-entry subjected the passenger to 14.7g rather than the planned figure of approximately 12g. In late 1960, there had been a growing number of concerns about the standards of the Redstone launch vehicle the MR-2 test flight, crewed by a chimpanzee, had had technical problems during the launch leading to the spacecraft flying too high, too far and too fast. The replacement, Redstone #7, did not arrive at the Cape until late March by this time, however, the mission had already been postponed to await the results of another test flight. The booster originally intended for the flight, Redstone #3, had been delivered to the Cape in early December however, it was then used on the MR-1A test flight on December 19. However, as it had been earmarked since the summer as the first crewed spacecraft, the decision was taken to delay the mission until this particular capsule was ready, with a tentative launch date of March 6, rather than use an alternative capsule. It had originally been expected that a mission could be launched soon after the spacecraft was available, but Capsule #7 turned out to require extensive development and testing work before it was deemed safe for flight. The Freedom 7 spacecraft, Mercury capsule #7, was delivered to Cape Canaveral on December 9, 1960. The mission was a technical success, though American pride in the accomplishment was dampened by the fact that just 3 weeks before, the Soviet Union had launched the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, who completed one orbit on Vostok 1. Shepard and the capsule were picked up by helicopter and brought to an aircraft carrier. After re-entry, the capsule landed by parachute on the Atlantic ocean off the Bahamas. He also tested the retrorockets which would return later missions from orbit, though the capsule did not have enough energy to remain in orbit. It was the third Mercury flight launched with the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, close to the Atlantic Ocean.ĭuring the flight, Shepard observed the Earth and tested the capsule's attitude control system, turning the capsule around to face its blunt heat shield forward for atmospheric re-entry. His spacecraft reached an altitude of Template:Convert/round nautical miles (187.5 kilometers) and traveled a downrange distance of Template:Convert/round nautical miles (487.3 kilometers). The number 7 was included in all the manned Mercury spacecraft names to honor NASA's first group of seven astronauts. Shepard named his space capsule Freedom 7, setting a precedent for the remaining six Mercury astronauts naming their spacecraft. Shepard's mission was a 15-minute suborbital flight with the primary objective of demonstrating his ability to withstand the high g forces of launch and atmospheric re-entry. It was the first manned flight of Project Mercury, the objective of which was to put an astronaut into orbit around the Earth and return him safely. Template:Infobox spaceflight Mercury-Redstone 3, or Freedom 7, was the first United States human spaceflight, on May 5, 1961, piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard.
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