Microsoft Rewards Bing Homepage Quiz: Who became the first American in space just weeks after Gagarin’s flight?
A Buzz Aldrin
B Gus Grissom
C Alan Shepard
This leg of the space race was won by a nose. Shepard’s 15-minute suborbital spaceflight came less than a month after Gagarin’s—though he didn’t match the cosmonaut’s feat of orbiting Earth, as John Glenn would the next year. Shepard later claimed another critical space race first by golfing on the moon.
The correct answer is Alan Shepard.