50 Years Ago: Freedom 7 Flies . ... Credit Copyright: NASA Explanation: Fifty years ago, near the dawn of the space age , NASA controllers "lit the candle" and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket . His cramped space capsule was dubbed Freedom 7 . ... The flight of Freedom 7 - the first space flight by an American - followed less than a month after the first human venture into space by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin . ... NASA Official: Jay Norris. ...