水星-红石3号的发射
原文
Sixty years ago, near the dawn of the space age, NASA controllers “lit the candle” and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. His cramped space capsule was dubbed Freedom 7. Broadcast live to a global television audience, the historic Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Florida at 9:34 a.m. Eastern Time on May 5, 1961. The flight of Freedom 7, the first space flight by an American, followed less than a month after the first human venture into space by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The 15 minute sub-orbital flight achieved an altitude of 116 miles and a maximum speed of 5,134 miles per hour. As Shepard looked back near the peak of Freedom 7’s trajectory, he could see the outlines of the west coast of Florida, Lake Okeechobe in central Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bahamas. Shepard would later view planet Earth from a more distant perspective and walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission.
生词
atop 在……的顶上
cramp 抽筋，痉挛
cramped 狭窄的，狭小的
Cosmonaut 特指Soviet Union 的宇航员
trajectory： The trajectory of a moving object is the path that it follows as it moves. 轨迹
翻译
说明: 六十年前在太空年代初萌芽的时候，美国航太总署的控制人员“点火”，用红石火箭把水星计画的太空人薛波送入太空。他乘坐的拥挤太空舱名为自由7号。当时进行全球电视实况转播的这次历史性任务里，水星-红石3号太空船（MR-3）于1961年5月5日美东时间9:34 a.m.发射升空。这个首次乘载美国太空人的自由7号任务，落后苏联宇航员加加林的人类首次太空任务不到一个月。这次为时15分钟的次轨道飞行，最大的高度约有186公里，最高时速则约为8,200公里。薛波在自由7号轨道的最高点回头眺望，见到了佛罗里达州的西岸、佛州中部的欧基求碧湖．墨西哥湾、和巴哈马。薛波后来在阿波罗14号任务担任指挥官，并在月表漫步时，以更远的视点观看地球。
