Innholdsfortegnelse for All About Space Apollo Missions i All About Space Apollo Missions

KEY: Entered lunar orbit Walked on Moon VIRGIL ‘GUS’ GRISSOM 3 April 1926 – 27 January 1967 • US Air Force test pilot • Mercury-Redstone 4 • Gemini 3 APOLLO 1 COMMANDER EDWARD ‘ED’ WHITE 14 November 1930 – 27 January 1967 • Aeronautical engineering Master’s degree • US Air Force test pilot • Gemini 4 APOLLO 1 COMMAND PILOT ROGER CHAFFEE 15 February 1935 – 27 January 1967 • Aeronautical engineering degree • US Navy jet aircraft pilot • Gemini 4 capsule communications specialist APOLLO 1 PILOT WALTER ‘WALLY’ SCHIRRA 12 March 1923 – 3 May 2007 • US Navy test pilot • Mercury-Atlas 8 • Gemini 6A APOLLO 7 (EARTH ORBIT) COMMANDER DONN EISELE 23 June 1930 – 2 December 1987 • Astronautics Master’s degree • US Air Force test…

Orbital Rate Display (out of shot) The ORD provided the correct signal to rotate the Flight Director Attitude Indicator (FDAI) at a rate that matched the orbital period. If the ORD was initialised correctly, the FDAI would display altitudes relative to the surface below. Attitude Controllers The attitude controllers maintained or changed the angle of the spacecraft during a maneuver. Thrust Controller This joystick allowed the astronaut to control the forward, backward and sideways movement of the LM flew using the jets. It could also be used as a throttle to control the descent engine. Contact Lights The contact lights indicated to the module’s crew that they were in close proximity to the Moon’s “surface” and that they should cut the Descent Propulsion System (DPS) engine. Broken Engine Circuit Breaker…

Apollo 7 was the programme’s first successful crewed flight into space. The crew of Wally Schirra, Don Eisele and Walter Cunningham spent nearly 11 days in space as they orbited Earth and tested out the spacecraft that was designed to bring humans safely to the Moon and back again. By the time the mission launched on 11 October 1968, NASA had worked hard at improving crew safety and heeded the concerns that arose after a Command Module fire killed the Apollo 1 crew 20 months earlier during a routine launch pad test. But Apollo 7 proved to be an engineering success, despite crew illness and reports of tension between the space crew and ground crew. Apollo 7 was essentially a test flight for manned spacecraft. After Apollo 1, three unmanned…

Just a few months after the Apollo 9 mission, on 18 May 1969, was the launch of Apollo 10. This mission saw three of NASA’s finest astronauts perform the ‘rehearsal’ for the Apollo 11 mission – they left Earth, went to the Moon and made a Lunar Module descent, but didn't actually make the historic touchdown. The Apollo 10 mission put everything in place so that Apollo 11 could cement its place in history books. The trio of cosmic adventurers consisted of commander Thomas Stafford, Lunar Module pilot Eugene Cernan and Command Module pilot John Young. These three were no amateurs in spaceflight: it was Stafford’s third, Young’s third and Cernan’s second spaceflight, and it wouldn't be their last. Stafford went on to be commander of the US-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test…

1. Lift-off Time: 00:00:00 Apollo 13 was the third manned mission to the lunar surface, and the crew planned to explore the Fra Mauro region on the near-side of the Moon. “Mission control held its breath as the crew dropped through the atmosphere” 2. Television transmission Time: 55:14:00 Shortly before the explosion, the crew took part in a live television broadcast back to Earth, showing viewers what life was like inside the module. 3. “Houston, we’ve had a problem” Time: 55:55:20 After the broadcast had ended, the crew were asked to stir the oxygen tanks. Tank two was faulty, and the procedure triggered a catastrophic explosion in the SM, venting their vital oxygen supply and taking the fuel cells offline. 4. To the lifeboat Time: 57:43:00 As the remaining oxygen…

Officially known as the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), NASA’s state-of-the-art, $38-million-dollar Moon buggy was more spacecraft than regular vehicle. Its designers were tasked with producing a buggy that could carry two astronauts in heavy spacesuits, along with their scientific equipment, over the rugged lunar terrain where temperatures can range from +/-120 degrees Celsius (+/-250 degrees Fahrenheit) and the gravity is one-sixth the strength that it is on Earth. To fit the buggy inside the 1.8x1.2-metre (6x4-foot) Quadrant 1 bay of the Descent Stage of the Lunar Module, the wheels were folded inwards and the whole body was folded in half. A set of ropes, cloth tapes, pulleys and springs enabled it to be swung out from the craft, and the wheels and body semi-automatically snapped into place. It took the…

1961-1966 SA and AS unmanned missions In preparation for the manned Moon missions, NASA conducted a series of tests using various iterations of the Saturn rocket, in order to practice launch, Low Earth Orbit, re-entry and mission aborts. July-August 1966 AS-202 and AS-203 (unofficially Apollo 2 and 3, re-designated) • Unmanned • Test flights, success After AS-204’s launch test disaster, the mission was retroactively renamed Apollo 1 and the names of future missions were changed. Apollo 2 (which was due to be a repeat of Apollo 1) and Apollo 3 (due to be the first test of the Block II CSM) were re-designated as the earlier 1966 test flights AS-202 and AS-203 respectively, but they were not officially renumbered in the Apollo series. 27 January 1967 Apollo 1 (AS-204) •…

“We choose to go to the Moon in this " decade and do the other things, not W because they are easy, but because they are hard,” the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said resolutely to a large crowd that had gathered around his podium at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas, on 12 September 1962. That day, the politician had laid down a gauntlet to NASA. The space agency’s job was to find the astronauts with the right stuff. Fortunately for them, they weren’t short of those wanting to step up to the challenge. One of the first candidates came in the form of a six-foot former pilot of the US Navy. An individual who had seen action in the Korean War, flying 78 missions…

The Apollo programme changed forever on 27 January 1967, when a flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a launch rehearsal test. The three men inside perished despite the best efforts of the ground crew. It would take more than 18 months, and extensive redesigns, before NASA sent more men into space. NASA had a lofty goal, set by President John F Kennedy in 1961, to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. Earlier Mercury and Gemini flights had been the first steps toward that goal, testing how humans behaved in space and how to perform technical spacecraft procedures such as rendezvous. Now the Apollo missions would take astronauts all the way to the Moon for…

Apollo 8 was the second crewed mission of the Apollo program and the first mission to bring humans to the Moon. The six-day mission lifted off on 21 December 1968, with its crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. The flight included a day orbiting the Moon, during which the astronauts took the “Earthrise” picture – one of the most iconic photographs ever taken of our planet. The photo has also been credited as a major impetus for the environmental movement. This historic mission happened because of a last-minute decision from NASA management. Initially, the agency planned to test the Lunar and Command Module components of the Apollo spacecraft first before striking out for the Moon. At the time, the United States and Russia were engaged in a…

Apollo 14 was the third human mission to land on the Moon, and the first one since the Apollo 13 mission that experienced a dangerous explosion in space before the crew was returned safely to Earth. NASA made changes to the Apollo spacecraft design before Apollo 14 lifted off on 31 January 1971. Today, many people remember this mission as the one where an astronaut hit golf balls, but the crew also had other adventures. The team searched for evidence of an asteroid that carved a large crater in the Moon and fought glitches and false alarms as they made their way to the Fra Mauro highlands. Their colleagues at NASA good-naturedly referred to the Apollo 14 crew as "the three rookies," because the team had only a few minutes…

Apollo 16 was the second-to-last mission of the Apollo program and the fifth to land humans on the Moon. Apollo 16 launched on 16 April 1972, and landed at the Descartes highlands, a lunar highland area near the Descartes crater. While there, the crew searched for volcanic rocks. Although the astronauts didn't come back with the rocks they were searching for, their skill in picking out geological targets and their ability to cope with changing fortunes made this mission a highlight of scientific discovery on the Moon. The Apollo 16 astronauts Cmdr John Young was among NASA’s most seasoned astronauts, having already spent a decade in the career. The former US Navy aviator flew twice in the Gemini program, flying as co-pilot in the first mission (Gemini 3, 1965) and…

“…Now it is time to take longer strides, time for a great new American enterprise, time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth. I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to ensure their fulfilment. […] Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake,…

NASA’s original plan to send humans to the Moon was daring, if not risky. Two uncrewed flights of the Saturn rocket would be followed by three crewed flights. Then there would be a lunar landing rehearsal, followed by the actual landing – just the seventh mission of the Apollo programme. And in 1966, things were looking pretty good. The agency’s Gemini missions were ticking along nicely, with about half of them complete. Early variants of the Saturn rocket had been tested, and components of the Apollo missions were far through in development. What could go wrong? The Apollo missions, before they were numbered, were designated by a letter. The initial missions in Earth orbit would begin with the ‘A mission’, which would be an uncrewed flight of the command-service module…

The Apollo program paved the way for human space exploration and inspired a generation of future astronauts, scientists and engineers. Apollo 11, the mission that saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step foot on the Moon, wasn’t possible without the ten other missions before it. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 9 mission that saw James A McDivitt, David R Scott and Russell “Rusty” Schweickart conduct the first tests of the crewed Lunar Module (LM) and Command and Service Module (CSM) along with the portable life-support systems that would be used when exploring the Moon. On 3 March 1969 these three astronauts strapped themselves in for the ride of their lives, sitting aboard a Saturn V rocket at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States.…

“Somebody said that [me not taking pictures of Neil] was intentional” It’s said that Aldrin was getting Armstrong back by taking no photos of him on the Moon in retribution for the latter getting the honour of being the first to set foot on the Moon. However, and according to Aldrin, he was about to take a picture of Armstrong at the flag ceremony when President Nixon called, distracting them from the task. “As the sequence of lunar operations evolved, Neil had the camera most of the time, and the majority of the pictures taken on the Moon that include an astronaut are of me,” Aldrin states. “It wasn’t until we were back on Earth and in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory looking over the pictures that we realised there were…

After performing two successful Moon landings, NASA had pulled ahead of the Soviet Union as the undisputed leader in the Space Race. But a potentially fatal accident on its third lunar surface-bound mission was about to bring it back down to Earth. Apollo 13 was surrounded with superstition from the start, the number 13 believed to be unlucky, but NASA wasn’t going to let that get in the way of science. The public and the press, however, seemed more focused on the mission’s designation than its aims, with many questioning why NASA even needed to revisit the Moon after the successes of Apollo 11 and 12. NASA knew these landings were more than just a novelty, so the Apollo program continued – for now – and Deke Slayton, director of…

Apollo 15, which launched on 26 July 1971, marked the beginning of NASA’s most challenging crewed missions to the Moon. This mission featured the longest stay yet on the lunar surface, three moonwalks and the first use of a "Moon buggy," or lunar rover. Only two more crewed missions followed after Apollo 15: Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. In the training for Apollo 15, the mission’s three astronauts put an emphasis on geological work. They spent many hours in the field learning how to identify different types of rocks and formations. The crew, all former US Air Force pilots, had trained together in the past, serving as backups for the Apollo 12 mission. Commander Dave Scott had two spaceflight missions under his belt. He was the Command Module pilot on…

Apollo 17 took the 11th and 12th people to the surface of the Moon and marked the end of the Apollo programme. By the time the mission launched, on 7 December 1972, public interest in space exploration had declined and the government had shifted focus to the Vietnam War. These and many other factors brought the program to a close, even though three more flights were originally planned. Apollo 17 was the first mission to include a scientist in its crew. Geologist Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt was one of the first six scientist-astronauts selected in 1965 amid immense pressure to do so from the National Academy of Sciences, which was worried that only test pilots would get the opportunity to walk on the Moon. When it came time to select the…

Throughout human history there have been many times when people have worked together to achieve great goals. The construction of the Panama Canal in the early-20th century is one standout example, and the International Space Station (ISS) at the turn of the 21st is another. But perhaps none quite matches the importance, scope and sheer bravado of the Apollo programme. With an estimated 400,000 people involved and about $100 billion in today’s money spent, it was – and remains – one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. And even today, we are reaping the incredible rewards of this once-in-a-lifetime project. The Apollo missions ended in 1972 with waning public interest in the programme itself, but the appetite for space exploration had been whetted. Humans had landed on the Moon,…