Best Suborbital
Freedom 7 was the spacecraft used in NASA's Mercury-Redstone 3 mission, launched on May 5, 1961. Piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard, the mission made him the first American to travel into space. The suborbital flight lasted roughly 15 minutes, reaching an apogee of 116 miles before splashing down in...
Mercury-Redstone 3, utilizing the Freedom 7 spacecraft, was the first crewed space mission in United States history. Launched by NASA on May 5, 1961, it carried astronaut Alan Shepard on a 15-minute suborbital flight to an altitude of 116 statute miles. The capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocea...
Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, is focused on developing reusable launch vehicles and enabling access to space for both scientific and commercial purposes. Their New Shepard rocket provides suborbital flights for research and tourism. The development of the New Glenn rocket aims to provide hea...
Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity is a suborbital spaceplane that became the first of its kind to reach space in December 2018, successfully paving the way for space tourism.
New Shepard is a reusable suborbital launch system developed and operated by Blue Origin for human spaceflight and research payloads. It consists of a vertical-launch booster and a pressurized crew capsule that separates near the top of the flight; the booster lands propulsively, while the capsule r...
This October 2021 Blue Origin suborbital flight is notable for carrying actor William Shatner into space, making him the oldest person to fly to space at that time.
