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)

     
    
    
         
DAVID MELENDY

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.

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.

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S.
lunar landing missions, was successfully launched on its
238,000-mile journey to the moon.

Four days later, the three astronauts returned to Earth, safely
splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.