On May 5, 1961 Alan B. Shepard was launched on a sub-orbital flight that lasted a little over fifteen minutes. He was Americas first man in space.

The Gemini Program was intended to be an intermediate step between Mercury and Apollo. The Gemini spacecraft carried two astronauts and it was the first spacecraft to use a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity.

On May 25 1961, just twenty days after Alan Shepards fifteen minute sub-orbital flight, President John F. Kennedy said "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." Eight years later Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon.

Skylab, America's first space station, was launched on May 14, 1973. Successful in all respects, despite some early mechanical difficulties, the station was occupied by three crews for over 171 days. It was the site of nearly 300 scientific and technical experiments.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the first docking of two spacecraft from different countries. The complexity of this project was great considering the people involved spoke different languages, and especially since the two nations were considered cold war enemies at the time.