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. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes
and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere,
was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA).

The crew, which included Fred Haise( left), Jim Lovell
(middle) and Jack Swigert (right).

With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar
spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey
to the moon, safely returned to Earth on April 17, 1970.

On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was
launched from Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell,
John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise. The mission was headed
for a landing on the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon.

However, two days into the mission, disaster struck 200,000
miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up in the
spacecraft. Swigert reported to mission control on Earth,
“Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and it was discovered
that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light and water
had been disrupted.

The landing mission was aborted, and the astronauts and
controllers on Earth scrambled to come up with emergency
procedures. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon,
looped around it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth.

Crew portrait for Artemis II, from left: NASA Astronauts
Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Canadian
Space Agency Astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly to the
moon by the end of next year, including one woman and three
men.

The three Americans and one Canadian were introduced during
a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well
as Mission Control.

"This is humanity’s crew," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy
Space Center no earlier than late 2024. They will not land or even
go into lunar orbit, but rather fly around the moon and head
straight back to Earth, a prelude to a lunar landing by two others
a year later.

Provided this next 10-day moonshot goes well, NASA aims to
land two astronauts on the moon by 2025 or so.

NASA picked from 41 active astronauts for its first Artemis crew
and Canada had four candidates. (MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer)

Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe,was
launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to
Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, on this day
in 1972.

In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the
asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles,
Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth
the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant.

In June 1983, the NASA spacecraft left the solar system
and the next day radioed back the first scientific data on
interstellar space. NASA officially ended the Pioneer 10
project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having
traveled a distance of some six billion miles.

(FOXNEWS) – John Glenn, Marine Corps combat pilot, pioneer
of human exploration and later a longtime United States senator,
became the first American to orbit the Earth on this day in history,
Feb. 20, 1962.

"Glenn’s ride into space, a great technical accomplishment, held
even greater significance for the country," says the website of the
John & Annie Glenn Museum in the astronaut’s hometown of New Concord, Ohio.

Astronaut John Glenn photographed in space by an
automatic sequence motion picture camera during
his historic orbital flight on "Friendship 7."