Which spacecraft carried the first American astronaut into space?

The spacecraft that carried the first American astronaut into space was Mercury-Redstone 3, which was also known as Freedom 7. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard made a suborbital flight, marking a significant milestone in the U.S. space program. This mission demonstrated the United States' ability to launch humans into space, establishing a foothold in the ongoing space race against the Soviet Union.

Mercury-Redstone 3 was part of NASA's Mercury program, which aimed to test the feasibility of human space travel and gather data about the effects of spaceflight on the human body. The success of this mission laid the groundwork for subsequent manned space missions and was a pivotal moment in American space exploration history.

Other spacecraft mentioned, such as Apollo 11 and the Space Shuttle, were instrumental in later missions but occurred after Mercury-Redstone 3. Vostok-1 was the first spacecraft to carry a human into space, launched by the Soviet Union with Yuri Gagarin aboard, which predates the American mission.