Most meteorites that have reached Earth come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But we have 1,000 or so ...

Before any human dared orbit the stars, a young chimpanzee named Ham took the leap. His journey from the jungles of Cameroon ...

Her journey was a significant milestone in the early days of space exploration. Ham the Chimpanzee: Ham, the first chimpanzee trained for space travel, was launched aboard the Mercury-Redstone 2 ...

The rocket's malfunction on the pad bears a faint resemblance to NASA's 1960 Mercury-Redstone 1 incident, an uncrewed suborbital test flight. Whereas Gilmour Space's vehicle never got as far as a ...

Shortly after 9 AM on May 5, 1961, Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. became the second person—and the first American—in space, rocketing to a height of 116.5 miles inside his Mercury capsule.

On May 5, 1961, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to go to space. He launched from Cape Canaveral on a Mercury-Redstone rocket in a space capsule named Freedom 7. This was the ...

Trying to dig herself, Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez out of a P.R. debacle, King actually likened their Jeff Bezos space-tourism ride to Alan Shepard's historic 1961 mission.

On March 24, 1961, NASA's Mercury Redstone rocket launched on its last uncrewed flight before it started sending astronauts into space. The mission was known as the Mercury Redstone Booster ...

When the Redstone burned out, the capsule was supposed to separate, coast to an altitude of 115 miles, then fall to the sea 298 miles downrange, where a swarm of ships and aircraft was waiting to ...

Ham’s capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean and was recovered by the USS Donner. Above, Ham is greeted by the recovery ship Commander after his flight on the Mercury Redstone rocket.

Atop a towering Redstone rocket rested the one-ton Mercury space capsule of the type that is supposed to carry the first astronaut into orbit some time in late 1961.