Labels:text | screenshot | font | number OCR: SUBORBITAL ...................... .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE TERM suborbital describes the trajectory of a rocket that leaves and then reenters the Earth's atmosphere without going into orbit. A rocket without enough speed to go into orbit will fly a suborbital arc through the atmosphere before it falls back to Earth. Alan Shepard, the pilot of the first Mercury mission, flew in a suborbital trajectory from Florida over the Atlantic Ocean.