Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012)

CAMILLE BOHANNON

On June 3, 1965, 120 miles above the Earth, Major Edward H.
White II opened the hatch of the Gemini 4 and stepped out of
the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk
in space.

White had been preceded as a space walker, by Soviet
cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, who on March 18, 1965,
was the first man ever to walk in space.

Astronaut Ed White was the first American to walk in space.

Ellen Ochoa is an American engineer, former astronaut and
former director of the Johnson Space Center. In 1993, Ochoa
became the first Latina woman to go to space when she served
on a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Ochoa became director of the center upon the retirement of
the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012.

On May 5, 1961, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. 
was launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule,
becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space.

Shepard and Freedom 7 on the deck of the aircraft carrier
USS Lake Champlain.

Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (1923 – 1998)

       
CARLATA BRADLEY

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Herschel Glenn Jr. was
successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7
spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.

Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was
among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration in 1959 to become America’s 
first astronauts.

President John F. Kennedy on the phone.

John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016)