American-crewed space program

The Mercury program was the first phase of America’s effort to put
a human on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. On May 5, 1961, the first
piloted Mercury flight, Freedom 7, was launched. It took astronaut Alan
Shepard on a 15-minute suborbital flight (only a partial—not complete—
orbit of Earth) that went 116 miles (187 kilometers) up and 303 miles
(488 kilometers) across the Atlantic Ocean at speeds up to 5,146 miles
(8,280 kilometers) per hour. The capsule than parachuted safely into the
Atlantic Ocean with Shepard inside.
Two months later, another U.S. suborbital flight was launched, this
one carrying Virgil “Gus” Grissom. Grissom’s flight was similar to Shepard’s,
except at splashdown his capsule took in water and sank. Grissom
was unharmed, but his capsule, the Liberty Bell 7, was not recovered.
On February 20, 1962, just over nine months after Gagarin’s flight,
astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. His spacecraft,
Friendship 7, completed three orbits in less than five hours.
Lunar program. The Apollo program was created for the purpose of
landing American astronauts on the Moon. Engineers designed a craft
consisting of three parts: a command module, in which the astronauts
would travel; a service module, which contained supplies and equipment;
and a lunar module, which would detach to land on the Moon.
The Apollo program was not without mishap. During a ground
test in 1967, a fire engulfed the cabin of the Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. This tragedy prompted
a two-year delay in the launch of the first Apollo spacecraft. During
this time, more than 1,500 modifications were made to the command
module.
In December 1968, Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to
orbit both Earth and the Moon. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 was launched
with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael
Collins on board. Four days later Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the
Moon. When Armstrong set foot on lunar soil, he stated, “That’s one small
step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The Apollo 11 flight to the
Moon is considered by many to be the greatest technological achievement
of the modern world. Over the next three years, five more Apollo missions
landed twelve more Americans on the Moon.