The Space Race Exhibit Highlights Slideshow

Launch of the Mercury MR-3 Freedom 7 Space Capsule

Lift Off!

Astronaut Alan Shepard is hurled into space atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket, May 5, 1961

photograph courtesy NASA

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Alan Shepard in Freedom 7 Space Capsule

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Recovery of the Mercury MR-3 Freedom 7 space capsule

Courtesy NASA

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Mercury Seven Astronauts, December 3, 1962

Mercury Seven astronauts, Courtesy NASA [84PC-0022, GPN-2000-000651]

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Evaluation of Space Program: Memorandum from Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to President Kennedy, April 28, 1961

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Lunar Sample

Lunar sample (encased in a glass pyramid) brought back to earth by the Apollo 15 mission on August 7, 1971.

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