Rear Admiral Alan B. Shepard was one of the Mercury astronauts named by NASA in April 1959 and he holds the destinction of being the first American into space. On May 5, 1961, in the Freedom 7 spacecraft, he was launched by a Redstone vehicle on a ballistic trajectory Suborbital flight, a flight which carried him to an altitude of 116 miles and to a landing point 302 statute miles down the Atlantic Missil Range.