April 22, 2011 – He walked on the moon decades ago, and later this month, his family will be given a moon rock to commemorate his contributions to the U.S. space program.
NASA will posthumously honor Alan B. Shepard, Jr., the first American astronaut in space, with an Ambassador of Exploration Award on April 28. Shepard’s family members will accept the award on his behalf, and then will present the award to the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, for permanent display.
Shepard, a 1945 graduate of the Naval Academy, was one of NASA's original seven Mercury astronauts selected in April 1959. On May 5, 1961, he was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft on a suborbital flight that carried him to an altitude of 116 miles.
Shepard made his second spaceflight as the commander of Apollo 14 from January 31 to February 9, 1971. He was accompanied on the third lunar landing by astronauts Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell. Maneuvering the lunar module "Antares" to a landing in the hilly upland Fra Mauro region of the moon, Shepard and Mitchell deployed and activated a number of scientific instruments and collected almost 100 pounds of lunar samples for return to Earth.
NASA is giving the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the first generation of explorers in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs for realizing America's goal of going to the moon. The rocks are part of the 842 pounds of lunar samples collected during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972.
Shepard retired from NASA in 1974 and died in July 1998.
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An inscription describes the rock as "a symbol of the unity of human endeavor and mankind’s hope for a future of peace and harmony." Photo credit: NASA
NASA will posthumously honor Alan B. Shepard, Jr., seen here in his Mercury flight suit. with an Ambassador of Exploration Award.
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