Space Race!
For some fun background info (if you’ve forgotten fourth grade already!) the Space Race was the height of space exploration, with the US and USSR racing to get the first human into space. On April 12th, 1961, the USSR was able to get Yuri Gagarin in the Vostok 1, making him the first human ever to orbit the earth. The US managed to get Alan Shepard into space less than a month later on May 5th. He did not achieve orbit, but he was able to manually operate his spacecraft, unlike Gagarin.