The U.S. Space & Rocket Center and the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber will hold a news conference Wednesday, May 5, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of America’s first manned space flight. The event will take place in the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at 2:30 p.m.
This date marks the milestone of Alan Shepard’s historic spaceflight on a Mercury Redstone rocket, entirely developed and built in Huntsville. Shepard’s launch happened 23 days after the Russians put Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961. Thanks to the work being done in Huntsville, America was ready to respond with its own flight.
The event will be held in the Davidson Center for Space Exploration, next to the Mercury Project procedures simulator that Shepard used as well as Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, John Glenn and the other Mercury 7 astronauts. The astronauts each spent hours in this simulator training to go to space, learning how to control the vehicle and how to react if something went wrong.
Scheduled to speak at the event are Dr. Kimberly Robinson, Executive Director and CEO; U.S. Space & Rocket Center; Tommy Battle, Mayor, City of Huntsville; Jody Singer, Director, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; and Jay Foster, who worked under Dr. Wernher von Braun on the Mercury Redstone program and is now a NASA Emeritus Docent at the Rocket Center.