Cmdr. Alan B. Shepard Jr. becomes the first Project Mercury astronaut to cross the space frontier. His flight in Freedom 7 lasts 15 minutes, 28 seconds, reaches an altitude of 116.5 miles, and ends 303.8 miles downrange.
Facing competition from fast-growing startups, Lockheed Martin is speeding up production of an “affordable, scalable” hypersonic glide body, dubbed the Next Generation Glide Body, the firm said in a June 24 release.