Where did the name "Freedom Seven" come from?

MISSION CONTROL: "Three, two, one, zero...liftoff!"

SHEPARD: "Roger, liftoff and the clock has started."

The clock has started. With those words, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. He was in a small spacecraft called Freedom Seven. It was on top of a huge rocket traveling at more than eight thousand kilometers an hour.

Fifteen minutes later, Freedom Seven came down in the Atlantic Ocean. Alan Shepard was a national hero. He had won an important victory for the United States. The date was May fifth, nineteen sixty-one.

Freedom Seven flew one hundred eighty-five kilometers high. Then it re-entered the atmosphere and the spacecraft slowed. The fifteen-minute flight ended with a soft splash into the ocean about five hundred kilometers from Cape Canaveral.

Alan Shepard reported: "Everything is A-Okay." A helicopter pulled him from the spacecraft and carried him to a waiting ship.