He served as operations officer of the 193rd Fighter Squadron on two tours of the Western Pacific, and as an instructor at the Navy Test Pilot School. After qualifying as a test pilot, he tested high-altitude aircraft and in-flight fueling systems, and made some of the first landings on angled carrier decks. Navy Test Pilot School in Patuxent, Maryland.

The Mercury flights proved that humans could live and work in space, and paved the way for the Gemini and Apollo spaceflight programs. The objectives of the program were to place a human-rated spacecraft into orbit around the Earth, and observe the astronauts’ performance in such conditions and safely recover the astronaut and the spacecraft. Project Mercury became NASA’s first major undertaking. The astronauts are, left to right: Cooper, Schirra, Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Slayton and Carpenter. This group photo of the original Mercury astronauts was taken in June 1963 at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. (Deke) Slayton along with Marine Corps aviator John H. Now known as the “Original Seven,” they included three Naval aviators, M.

Keith Glennan, announced the names of the agency’s first group of astronauts at a news conference in Washington, D.C. On April 9, 1959, NASA’s first administrator, Dr. After receiving his wings, he served with the 42nd Fighter Squadron for several tours of duty aboard aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Shepard was so eager to receive his wings and pilot’s license that he studied at a civilian flying school in his spare time while attending naval flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas and Pensacola, Florida. At war’s end, he married Louise Brewer, whom he had met while attending the Naval Academy.

After graduation, Ensign Shepard served on the destroyer Cogswell during the closing months of World War II. An excellent student, Shepard won an appointment to the U.S. As a boy he did odd jobs at the local airfield to learn about airplanes. Alan grew up on the family farm and attended East Derry’s one-room schoolhouse. was born and raised in East Derry, New Hampshire. J1946: Shepard began basic flight training school at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas.Īlan B.

MIND by David Lloyd Shepard