Pioneering computer scientist Patricia Palombo ’58 helped launch the first American into space
On May 5, 1961, Patricia Palombo ’58 watched, along with the rest of the nation, as NASA astronaut Alan Shepard was launched into suborbital flight aboard the Project Mercury capsule he’d dubbed Freedom 7. The long-awaited flight of the first American in space — Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space on April 12, 1961 — bolstered the country’s commitment to space exploration and led to President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 declaration that American astronauts would “go to the moon in this decade.”