Project Mercury began on October 7, 1958, one year and three days after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 and was the United States' first manned space program. The objectives of the program, which was made up of six manned flights from 1961 to 1963, were specific: 1) to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, 2) to investigate man's ability to function in space and 3) to recover both man and spacecraft safely. However, three weeks after Alan Shepard's first U.S. human suborbital flight, on May 5, 1961, and with only 15 minutes of U.S. space flight experience, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Project Mercury was American's first "small steps" toward that "Giant Leap for mankind."