How old was alan shepard when he died
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Alan Shepard
(1923-1998)
Who Was Alan Shepard?
In 1959, Alan Shepard became one of the original seven Mercury program astronauts. In May 1961, 23 days after Yury A. Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital flight that reached an altitude of 115 miles. He later commanded the Apollo 14 flight (1971), the first to land in the lunar highlands.
Early Career
Legendary astronaut Alan Shepard was born on November 18, 1923, in East Derry, New Hampshire. After completing high school, Shepard enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy. Shepard served on the destroyer Cogswell in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he trained to become a pilot. He attended the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1950.
As a test pilot, Shepard flew a number of experimental planes, including the F3H Demon and F5D Skylancer. He also served as an instructor at the Test Pilot School for a time. Later on, Shepard attended the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
American Astronaut
In 1959, Shepard won a coveted spot in
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Alan B. Shepard, Jr.
by Tara Gray
Alan B. Shepard, Jr. (RADM, USN, Ret.), was born on November 18, 1923, in East Derry, New Hampshire, to parents Lt. Col. Alan B. Shepard (USA, Ret.) and Renza (Emerson) Shepard.1 He attended primary school in East Derry and was graduated from the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, in 1940.2 He studied one year at Admiral Farragut Academy, Toms River, New Jersey, and then entered the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. He was graduated from the Naval Academy on June 7, 1944.3 After graduation, Shepard was commissioned as an ensign and during the final year of World War II he served on the destroyer Cogswell deployed in the Pacific.4 At war's end, on March 3, 1945, Shepard married the former Louise Brewer, of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, whom he had met while he was a midshipman at the Naval Academy.5
After the war, he underwent naval flight training at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, Texas, and Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida. Durin
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Alan Shepard
American astronaut and lunar explorer (1923–1998)
For other uses, see Alan Shepard (disambiguation).
Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the Moon, at age 47.
A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard saw action with the surface navy during World War II. He became a naval aviator in 1947, and a test pilot in 1950. He was selected as one of the original NASAMercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made the first crewed Project Mercury flight, Mercury-Redstone 3, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. His craft entered space, but was not capable of achieving orbit. He became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space. In the final stages of Project Mercury, Shepard was scheduled to pilot the Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10), which was planned as a three-day mission. He named Mercury Spacecraft 15B Freedom 7 II in
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