1969 SPACE BOOK Hebrew MOON LANDING Israel APOLLO 11 Russian AMERICAN Spacecraft

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Seller: judaica-bookstore ✉️ (2,805) 100%, Location: TEL AVIV, IL, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 276324006494 1969 SPACE BOOK Hebrew MOON LANDING Israel APOLLO 11 Russian AMERICAN Spacecraft. DESCRIPTION : Here for sale is an exquisitely illustrated HEBREW - ISRAELI book regarding the SPACE RESEARCH which was published around 40 years ago , Right after the historical MOON LANDING in 1969. It's an ALL HEBREW - ISRAELI book - Not a translated adaptation of a foreighn publication.  The Hebrew book "A MAN on the MOON" is loaded with explanations accompanied by numerous photos and  illustrations regarding Space, Planets, Spacecrafts, Galaxies, Satellites, Rockets, Propellants, Cosmonauts and Astronauts to name only a few. An hommage is given also to GAGARIN and the various RUSSIAN space achievements.   Hebrew. HC. Original illustrated  DJ. 9" x 12". 256 throughout illustrated pp . Very good condition. Clean and tightly bound.Slight DJ wear. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) .Book will be sent inside a protective packaging .   PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards . SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via  registered airmail is $ 29. Book will be sent inside a protective packaging . Will be sent  around 5-10 days after payment .   1969 Moon Landing HISTORY.COM EDITORSUPDATED:MAY 14, 2021ORIGINAL:JAN 30, 2019 NASA/Newsmakers/Getty Images CONTENTS JFK's Pledge Leads to Start of Apollo Program Timeline of the 1969 Moon Landing How Many Times Did the US Land on the Moon? On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972. WATCH: Moon Landing: The Lost Tapes on HISTORY Vault  JFK's Pledge Leads to Start of Apollo Program The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in an appeal President Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."  At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination.  Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire. READ MORE: How Landing on the Moon Cost Dozens of Lives 6 GALLERY 6 IMAGES President Richard Nixon spoke with Armstrong and Aldrin via a telephone radio transmission shortly after they planted the American flag on the lunar surface. Nixon considered it the "most historic phone call ever made from the White House." Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing.  In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the far side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. That May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission. READ MORE: When Apollo 10 Nearly Crashed Into the Moon Scroll to Continue Recommended for you Hitler’s Teeth Reveal Nazi Dictator’s Cause of Death The Wildest Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories, Debunked 9 Unexpected Things Navy SEALs Discovered in Osama bin Laden’s Compound Timeline of the 1969 Moon Landing At 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins (1930-) aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:17 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a now-famous message: "The Eagle has landed." At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation.  At 10:56 p.m., as Armstrong stepped off the ladder and planted his foot on the moon’s powdery surface, he spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." READ MORE: Apollo 11 Moon Landing Timeline: From Liftoff to Splashdown Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface 19 minutes later, and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests and spoke with President Richard Nixon (1913-94) via Houston.  By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon—July 1969 A.D.—We came in peace for all mankind." At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. on July 24.[151] ****** A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959.[3] The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969.[4] There were six crewed U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013. The United States is the only country to have successfully conducted crewed missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until 3 January 2019, when the Chinese Chang'e 4 spacecraft made the first landing on the far side of the Moon.[5] Contents 1 Uncrewed landings 2 Crewed landings 3 Scientific background 4 Political background 5 Early Soviet uncrewed lunar missions (1958–1965) 6 Early U.S. uncrewed lunar missions (1958–1965) 6.1 Pioneer missions 6.2 Ranger missions 7 Soviet uncrewed soft landings (1966–1976) 8 U.S. uncrewed soft landings (1966–1968) 9 Transition from direct ascent landings to lunar orbit operations 10 Soviet lunar orbit satellites (1966–1974) 11 U.S. lunar orbit satellites (1966–1967) 12 Soviet circumlunar loop flights (1967–1970) 13 Human Moon landings (1969–1972) 13.1 US strategy 13.2 Soviet strategy 13.3 Apollo missions 13.4 Human Moon landings 13.5 Other aspects of the successful Apollo landings 14 Late 20th century–Early 21st century uncrewed crash landings 14.1 Hiten (Japan) 14.2 Lunar Prospector (US) 14.3 SMART-1 (ESA) 14.4 Chandrayaan-1 (India) 14.5 Chang'e 1 (China) 14.6 SELENE (Japan) 14.7 LCROSS (US) 14.8 GRAIL (US) 14.9 LADEE (US) 15 21st century uncrewed soft landings and attempts 15.1 Chang'e 3 (China) 15.2 Chang'e 4 (China) 15.3 Beresheet (Israel) 15.4 Chandrayaan 2 (India) 15.5 Chang'e 5 (China) 16 Landings on moons of other Solar System bodies 17 Proposed future missions 18 Historical empirical evidence 19 See also 20 References and notes 21 Further reading 22 External links Uncrewed landings Stamp with a drawing of the first soft landed probe Luna 9, next to the first view of the lunar surface photographed by the probe. After the unsuccessful attempt by Luna 1 to land on the Moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard Moon landing – "hard" meaning the spacecraft intentionally crashes into the Moon – later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4. Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets (retrorockets) to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976. In 1966, the USSR accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions. The U.S. followed with five uncrewed Surveyor soft landings. The Soviet Union achieved the first uncrewed lunar soil sample return with the Luna 16 probe on 24 September 1970. This was followed by Luna 20 and Luna 24 in 1972 and 1976, respectively. Following the failure at launch in 1969 of the first Lunokhod, Luna E-8 No.201, the Luna 17 and Luna 21 were successful uncrewed lunar rover missions in 1970 and 1973. Many missions were failures at launch. In addition, several uncrewed landing missions achieved the Lunar surface but were unsuccessful, including: Luna 15, Luna 18, and Luna 23 all crashed on landing; and the U.S. Surveyor 4 lost all radio contact only moments before its landing. More recently, other nations have crashed spacecraft on the surface of the Moon at speeds of around 8,000 kilometres per hour (5,000 mph), often at precise, planned locations. These have generally been end-of-life lunar orbiters that, because of system degradations, could no longer overcome perturbations from lunar mass concentrations ("masscons") to maintain their orbit. Japan's lunar orbiter Hiten impacted the Moon's surface on 10 April 1993. The European Space Agency performed a controlled crash impact with their orbiter SMART-1 on 3 September 2006. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed a controlled crash impact with its Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on 14 November 2008. The MIP was an ejected probe from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter and performed remote sensing experiments during its descent to the lunar surface. The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 1 executed a controlled crash onto the surface of the Moon on 1 March 2009. The rover mission Chang'e 3 soft-landed on 14 December 2013, as did its successor, Chang'e 4, on 3 January 2019. All crewed and uncrewed soft landings had taken place on the near side of the Moon, until 3 January 2019 when the Chinese Chang'e 4 spacecraft made the first landing on the far side of the Moon.[5] On 22 February 2019, Israeli private space agency SpaceIL launched spacecraft Beresheet on board a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the intention of achieving a soft landing. SpaceIL lost contact with the spacecraft and it crashed into the surface on 11 April 2019.[6] Indian Space Research Organization launched Chandrayaan-2 on 22 July 2019 with landing scheduled on 6 September 2019. However, at an altitude of 2.1 km from the Moon a few minutes before soft landing, the lander lost contact with the control room.[7] Crewed landings Further information: Apollo program See also: List of people who have walked on the Moon The view through the window of the Lunar Module Orion shortly after Apollo 16's landing. A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month period starting 20 July 1969, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17. Cernan was the last man to step off the lunar surface. All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the command module. The last three missions included a drivable lunar rover, the Lunar Roving Vehicle, for increased mobility. Scientific background To get to the Moon, a spacecraft must first leave Earth's gravity well; currently, the only practical means is a rocket. Unlike airborne vehicles such as balloons and jets, a rocket can continue accelerating in the vacuum outside the atmosphere. Upon approach of the target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. In order to land intact it must decelerate to less than about 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph) and be ruggedized to withstand a "hard landing" impact, or it must decelerate to negligible speed at contact for a "soft landing" (the only option for humans). The first three attempts by the U.S. to perform a successful hard Moon landing with a ruggedized seismometer package in 1962 all failed.[8] The Soviets first achieved the milestone of a hard lunar landing with a ruggedized camera in 1966, followed only months later by the first uncrewed soft lunar landing by the U.S. The speed of a crash landing on its surface is typically between 70 and 100% of the escape velocity of the target moon, and thus this is the total velocity which must be shed from the target moon's gravitational attraction for a soft landing to occur. For Earth's Moon, the escape velocity is 2.38 kilometres per second (1.48 mi/s).[9] The change in velocity (referred to as a delta-v) is usually provided by a landing rocket, which must be carried into space by the original launch vehicle as part of the overall spacecraft. An exception is the soft moon landing on Titan carried out by the Huygens probe in 2005. As the moon with the thickest atmosphere, landings on Titan may be accomplished by using atmospheric entry techniques that are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability. The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959.[10] Crash landings[11] may occur because of malfunctions in a spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an onboard landing rocket. There have been many such Moon crashes, often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the Lunar Module were deliberately crashed on the Moon several times to provide impacts registering as a moonquake on seismometers that had been left on the lunar surface. Such crashes were instrumental in mapping the internal structure of the Moon. To return to Earth, the escape velocity of the Moon must be overcome for the spacecraft to escape the gravity well of the Moon. Rockets must be used to leave the Moon and return to space. Upon reaching Earth, atmospheric entry techniques are used to absorb the kinetic energy of a returning spacecraft and reduce its speed for safe landing. These functions greatly complicate a moon landing mission and lead to many additional operational considerations. Any moon departure rocket must first be carried to the Moon's surface by a moon landing rocket, increasing the latter's required size. The Moon departure rocket, larger moon landing rocket and any Earth atmosphere entry equipment such as heat shields and parachutes must in turn be lifted by the original launch vehicle, greatly increasing its size by a significant and almost prohibitive degree. Political background Main article: Space Race hide This section has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This section's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. (January 2016) This section contains information of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article's subject matter. (January 2016) This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2013) The intense efforts devoted in the 1960s to achieving first an uncrewed and then ultimately a human Moon landing become easier to understand in the political context of its historical era. World War II had introduced many new and deadly innovations including blitzkrieg-style surprise attacks used in the invasion of Poland and Finland, and in the attack on Pearl Harbor; the V-2 rocket, a ballistic missile which killed thousands in attacks on London and Antwerp; and the atom bomb, which killed hundreds of thousands in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the 1950s, tensions mounted between the two ideologically opposed superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union that had emerged as victors in the conflict, particularly after the development by both countries of the hydrogen bomb. The first image of another world from space, returned by Luna 3, showed the far side of the Moon in October 1959. Willy Ley wrote in 1957 that a rocket to the Moon "could be built later this year if somebody can be found to sign some papers".[12] On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 as the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and so initiated the Space Race. This unexpected event was a source of pride to the Soviets and shock to the U.S., who could now potentially be surprise attacked by nuclear-tipped Soviet rockets in under 30 minutes.[citation needed] Also, the steady beeping of the radio beacon aboard Sputnik 1 as it passed overhead every 96 minutes was widely viewed on both sides[citation needed] as effective propaganda to Third World countries demonstrating the technological superiority of the Soviet political system compared to that of the U.S. This perception was reinforced by a string of subsequent rapid-fire Soviet space achievements. In 1959, the R-7 rocket was used to launch the first escape from Earth's gravity into a solar orbit, the first crash impact onto the surface of the Moon, and the first photography of the never-before-seen far side of the Moon. These were the Luna 1, Luna 2, and Luna 3 spacecraft. A 1963 conceptual model of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module The U.S. response to these Soviet achievements was to greatly accelerate previously existing military space and missile projects and to create a civilian space agency, NASA. Military efforts were initiated to develop and produce mass quantities of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would bridge the so-called missile gap and enable a policy of deterrence to nuclear war with the Soviets known as mutual assured destruction or MAD. These newly developed missiles were made available to civilians of NASA for various projects (which would have the added benefit of demonstrating the payload, guidance accuracy and reliabilities of U.S. ICBMs to the Soviets). While NASA stressed peaceful and scientific uses for these rockets, their use in various lunar exploration efforts also had secondary goal of realistic, goal-oriented testing of the missiles themselves and development of associated infrastructure,[citation needed] just as the Soviets were doing with their R-7. Early Soviet uncrewed lunar missions (1958–1965) After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historical records were released to allow the true accounting of Soviet lunar efforts. Unlike the U.S. tradition of assigning a particular mission name in advance of a launch, the Soviets assigned a public "Luna" mission number only if a launch resulted in a spacecraft going beyond Earth orbit. The policy had the effect of hiding Soviet Moon mission failures from public view. If the attempt failed in Earth orbit before departing for the Moon, it was frequently (but not always) given a "Sputnik" or "Cosmos" Earth-orbit mission number to hide its purpose. Launch explosions were not acknowledged at all. Mission Mass (kg) Launch vehicle Launch date Goal Result Semyorka – 8K72 23 September 1958 Impact Failure – booster malfunction at T+ 93 s Semyorka – 8K72 12 October 1958 Impact Failure – booster malfunction at T+ 104 s Semyorka – 8K72 4 December 1958 Impact Failure – booster malfunction at T+ 254 s Luna-1 361 Semyorka – 8K72 2 January 1959 Impact Partial success – first spacecraft to reach escape velocity, lunar flyby, solar orbit; missed the Moon Semyorka – 8K72 18 June 1959 Impact Failure – booster malfunction at T+ 153 s Luna-2 390 Semyorka – 8K72 12 September 1959 Impact Success – first lunar impact Luna-3 270 Semyorka – 8K72 4 October 1959 Flyby Success – first photos of lunar far side Semyorka – 8K72 15 April 1960 Flyby Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Semyorka – 8K72 16 April 1960 Flyby Failure – booster malfunction at T+ 1 s Sputnik-25 Semyorka – 8K78 4 January 1963 Landing Failure – stranded in low Earth orbit Semyorka – 8K78 3 February 1963 Landing Failure – booster malfunction at T+ 105 s Luna-4 1422 Semyorka – 8K78 2 April 1963 Landing Failure – lunar flyby at 8,000 kilometres (5,000 mi) Semyorka – 8K78 21 March 1964 Landing Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Semyorka – 8K78 20 April 1964 Landing Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Cosmos-60 Semyorka – 8K78 12 March 1965 Landing Failure – stranded in low Earth orbit Semyorka – 8K78 10 April 1965 Landing Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Luna-5 1475 Semyorka – 8K78 9 May 1965 Landing Failure – lunar impact Luna-6 1440 Semyorka – 8K78 8 June 1965 Landing Failure – lunar flyby at 160,000 kilometres (99,000 mi) Luna-7 1504 Semyorka – 8K78 4 October 1965 Landing Failure – lunar impact Luna-8 1550 Semyorka – 8K78 3 December 1965 Landing Failure – lunar impact during landing attempt Early U.S. uncrewed lunar missions (1958–1965) This section is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (September 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Artist's portrayal of a Ranger spacecraft right before impact One of the last photos of the Moon transmitted by Ranger 8 right before impact In contrast to Soviet lunar exploration triumphs in 1959, success eluded initial U.S. efforts to reach the Moon with the Pioneer and Ranger programs. Fifteen consecutive U.S. uncrewed lunar missions over a six-year period from 1958 to 1964 all failed their primary photographic missions;[13][14] however, Rangers 4 and 6 successfully repeated the Soviet lunar impacts as part of their secondary missions.[15][16] Failures included three U.S. attempts[8][15][17] in 1962 to hard land small seismometer packages released by the main Ranger spacecraft. These surface packages were to use retrorockets to survive landing, unlike the parent vehicle, which was designed to deliberately crash onto the surface. The final three Ranger probes performed successful high altitude lunar reconnaissance photography missions during intentional crash impacts between 2.62 and 2.68 kilometres per second (9,400 and 9,600 km/h).[18][19][20] Mission Mass (kg) Launch vehicle Launch date Goal Result Pioneer 0 38 Thor-Able 17 August 1958 Lunar orbit Failure – first stage explosion; destroyed Pioneer 1 34 Thor-Able 11 October 1958 Lunar orbit Failure – software error; reentry Pioneer 2 39 Thor-Able 8 November 1958 Lunar orbit Failure – third stage misfire; reentry Pioneer 3 6 Juno 6 December 1958 Flyby Failure – first stage misfire, reentry Pioneer 4 6 Juno 3 March 1959 Flyby Partial success – first US craft to reach escape velocity, lunar flyby too far to shoot photos due to targeting error; solar orbit Pioneer P-1 168 Atlas-Able 24 September 1959 Lunar orbit Failure – pad explosion; destroyed Pioneer P-3 168 Atlas-Able 29 November 1959 Lunar orbit Failure – payload shroud; destroyed Pioneer P-30 175 Atlas-Able 25 September 1960 Lunar orbit Failure – second stage anomaly; reentry Pioneer P-31 175 Atlas-Able 15 December 1960 Lunar orbit Failure – first stage explosion; destroyed Ranger 1 306 Atlas – Agena 23 August 1961 Prototype test Failure – upper stage anomaly; reentry Ranger 2 304 Atlas – Agena 18 November 1961 Prototype test Failure – upper stage anomaly; reentry Ranger 3 330 Atlas – Agena 26 January 1962 Landing Failure – booster guidance; solar orbit Ranger 4 331 Atlas – Agena 23 April 1962 Landing Partial success – first U.S. spacecraft to reach another celestial body; crash impact – no photos returned Ranger 5 342 Atlas – Agena 18 October 1962 Landing Failure – spacecraft power; solar orbit Ranger 6 367 Atlas – Agena 30 January 1964 Impact Failure – spacecraft camera; crash impact Ranger 7 367 Atlas – Agena 28 July 1964 Impact Success – returned 4308 photos, crash impact Ranger 8 367 Atlas – Agena 17 February 1965 Impact Success – returned 7137 photos, crash impact Ranger 9 367 Atlas – Agena 21 March 1965 Impact Success – returned 5814 photos, crash impact Pioneer missions Three different designs of Pioneer lunar probes were flown on three different modified ICBMs. Those flown on the Thor booster modified with an Able upper stage carried an infrared image scanning television system with a resolution of 1 milliradian to study the Moon's surface, an ionization chamber to measure radiation in space, a diaphragm/microphone assembly to detect micrometeorites, a magnetometer, and temperature-variable resistors to monitor spacecraft internal thermal conditions. The first, a mission managed by the United States Air Force, exploded during launch; all subsequent Pioneer lunar flights had NASA as the lead management organization. The next two returned to Earth and burned up upon reentry into the atmosphere after achieved maximum altitudes of around 110,000 kilometres (68,000 mi) and 1,450 kilometres (900 mi), far short of the roughly 400,000 kilometres (250,000 mi) required to reach the vicinity of the Moon. NASA then collaborated with the United States Army's Ballistic Missile Agency to fly two extremely small cone-shaped probes on the Juno ICBM, carrying only photocells which would be triggered by the light of the Moon and a lunar radiation environment experiment using a Geiger-Müller tube detector. The first of these reached an altitude of only around 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi), serendipitously gathering data that established the presence of the Van Allen radiation belts before reentering Earth's atmosphere. The second passed by the Moon at a distance of more than 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), twice as far as planned and too far away to trigger either of the on-board scientific instruments, yet still becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to reach a solar orbit. The final Pioneer lunar probe design consisted of four "paddlewheel" solar panels extending from a one-meter diameter spherical spin-stabilized spacecraft body equipped to take images of the lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, study radiation, measure magnetic fields, detect low frequency electromagnetic waves in space and use a sophisticated integrated propulsion system for maneuvering and orbit insertion as well. None of the four spacecraft built in this series of probes survived launch on its Atlas ICBM outfitted with an Able upper stage. Following the unsuccessful Atlas-Able Pioneer probes, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory embarked upon an uncrewed spacecraft development program whose modular design could be used to support both lunar and interplanetary exploration missions. The interplanetary versions were known as Mariners; lunar versions were Rangers. JPL envisioned three versions of the Ranger lunar probes: Block I prototypes, which would carry various radiation detectors in test flights to a very high Earth orbit that came nowhere near the Moon; Block II, which would try to accomplish the first Moon landing by hard landing a seismometer package; and Block III, which would crash onto the lunar surface without any braking rockets while taking very high resolution wide-area photographs of the Moon during their descent. Ranger missions See also: Ranger program The Ranger 1 and 2 Block I missions were virtually identical.[21][22] Spacecraft experiments included a Lyman-alpha telescope, a rubidium-vapor magnetometer, electrostatic analyzers, medium-energy-range particle detectors, two triple coincidence telescopes, a cosmic-ray integrating ionization chamber, cosmic dust detectors, and scintillation counters. The goal was to place these Block I spacecraft in a very high Earth orbit with an apogee of 110,000 kilometres (68,000 mi) and a perigee of 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi).[21] From that vantage point, scientists could make direct measurements of the magnetosphere over a period of many months while engineers perfected new methods to routinely track and communicate with spacecraft over such large distances. Such practice was deemed vital to be assured of capturing high-bandwidth television transmissions from the Moon during a one-shot fifteen-minute time window in subsequent Block II and Block III lunar descents. Both Block I missions suffered failures of the new Agena upper stage and never left low Earth parking orbit after launch; both burned up upon reentry after only a few days. The first attempts to perform a Moon landing took place in 1962 during the Rangers 3, 4 and 5 missions flown by the United States.[8][15][17] All three Block II missions basic vehicles were 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of 5,050 pounds-force (22.5 kN),[15] and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. This lander (code-named Tonto) was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquid freon. A 42 kg (56 pounds) 30-centimetre-diameter (0.98 ft) metal payload sphere floated and was free to rotate in a liquid freon reservoir contained in the landing sphere.[citation needed] "Everything that we do ought to really be tied-in to getting onto the Moon ahead of the Russians. ...We're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money, but we're talking about fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it, in my opinion, to do it is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them." — John F. Kennedy on the planned Moon landing, 21 November 1962[23] This payload sphere contained six silver-cadmium batteries to power a fifty-milliwatt radio transmitter, a temperature sensitive voltage controlled oscillator to measure lunar surface temperatures, and a seismometer designed with sensitivity high enough to detect the impact of a 5 lb (2.3 kg) meteorite on the opposite side of the Moon. Weight was distributed in the payload sphere so it would rotate in its liquid blanket to place the seismometer into an upright and operational position no matter what the final resting orientation of the external landing sphere. After landing, plugs were to be opened allowing the freon to evaporate and the payload sphere to settle into upright contact with the landing sphere. The batteries were sized to allow up to three months of operation for the payload sphere. Various mission constraints limited the landing site to Oceanus Procellarum on the lunar equator, which the lander ideally would reach 66 hours after launch. No cameras were carried by the Ranger landers, and no pictures were to be captured from the lunar surface during the mission. Instead, the 3.1 metres (10 ft) Ranger Block II mother ship carried a 200-scan-line television camera which was to capture images during the free-fall descent to the lunar surface. The camera was designed to transmit a picture every 10 seconds.[15] Seconds before impact, at 5 and 0.6 kilometres (3.11 and 0.37 mi) above the lunar surface, the Ranger mother ships took pictures (which may be viewed here). Other instruments gathering data before the mother ship crashed onto the Moon were a gamma ray spectrometer to measure overall lunar chemical composition and a radar altimeter. The radar altimeter was to give a signal ejecting the landing capsule and its solid-fueled braking rocket overboard from the Block II mother ship. The braking rocket was to slow and the landing sphere to a dead stop at 330 metres (1,080 ft) above the surface and separate, allowing the landing sphere to free fall once more and hit the surface.[citation needed] On Ranger 3, failure of the Atlas guidance system and a software error aboard the Agena upper stage combined to put the spacecraft on a course that would miss the Moon. Attempts to salvage lunar photography during a flyby of the Moon were thwarted by in-flight failure of the onboard flight computer. This was probably because of prior heat sterilization of the spacecraft by keeping it above the boiling point of water for 24 hours on the ground, to protect the Moon from being contaminated by Earth organisms. Heat sterilization was also blamed for subsequent in-flight failures of the spacecraft computer on Ranger 4 and the power subsystem on Ranger 5. Only Ranger 4 reached the Moon in an uncontrolled crash impact on the far side of the Moon.[citation needed] Heat sterilization was discontinued for the final four Block III Ranger probes.[citation needed] These replaced the Block II landing capsule and its retrorocket with a heavier, more capable television system to support landing site selection for upcoming Apollo crewed Moon landing missions. Six cameras were designed to take thousands of high-altitude photographs in the final twenty-minute period before crashing on the lunar surface. Camera resolution was 1,132 scan lines, far higher than the 525 lines found in a typical U.S. 1964 home television. While Ranger 6 suffered a failure of this camera system and returned no photographs despite an otherwise successful flight, the subsequent Ranger 7 mission to Mare Cognitum was a complete success. Breaking the six-year string of failures in U.S. attempts to photograph the Moon at close range, the Ranger 7 mission was viewed as a national turning point and instrumental in allowing the key 1965 NASA budget appropriation to pass through the United States Congress intact without a reduction in funds for the Apollo crewed Moon landing program. Subsequent successes with Ranger 8 and Ranger 9 further buoyed U.S. hopes. Soviet uncrewed soft landings (1966–1976) Model of Luna 16 Moon soil sample return lander Model of Soviet Lunokhod automatic Moon rover The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union, performed the first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February 1966. Airbags protected its 99 kilograms (218 lb) ejectable capsule which survived an impact speed of over 15 metres per second (54 km/h; 34 mph).[24] Luna 13 duplicated this feat with a similar Moon landing on 24 December 1966. Both returned panoramic photographs that were the first views from the lunar surface.[25] Luna 16 was the first robotic probe to land on the Moon and safely return a sample of lunar soil back to Earth.[26] It represented the first lunar sample return mission by the Soviet Union, and was the third lunar sample return mission overall, following the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions. This mission was later successfully repeated by Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976). In 1970 and 1973 two Lunokhod ("Moonwalker") robotic lunar rovers were delivered to the Moon, where they successfully operated for 10 and 4 months respectively, covering 10.5 km (Lunokhod 1) and 37 km (Lunokhod 2). These rover missions were in operation concurrently with the Zond and Luna series of Moon flyby, orbiter and landing missions. Mission Mass (kg) Booster Launch date Goal Result Landing zone Lat/Lon Luna-9 1580 Semyorka – 8K78 31 January 1966 Landing Success – first lunar soft landing, numerous photos Oceanus Procellarum 7.13°N 64.37°W Luna-13 1580 Semyorka – 8K78 21 December 1966 Landing Success – second lunar soft landing, numerous photos Oceanus Procellarum 18°52'N 62°3'W Proton 19 February 1969 Lunar rover Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Proton 14 June 1969 Sample return Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Luna-15 5,700 Proton 13 July 1969 Sample return Failure – lunar crash impact Mare Crisium unknown Cosmos-300 Proton 23 September 1969 Sample return Failure – stranded in low Earth orbit Cosmos-305 Proton 22 October 1969 Sample return Failure – stranded in low Earth orbit Proton 6 February 1970 Sample return Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Luna-16 5,600 Proton 12 September 1970 Sample return Success – returned 0.10 kg of Moon soil back to Earth Mare Fecunditatis 000.68S 056.30E Luna-17 5,700 Proton 10 November 1970 Lunar rover Success – Lunokhod-1 rover traveled 10.5 km across lunar surface Mare Imbrium 038.28N 325.00E Luna-18 5,750 Proton 2 September 1971 Sample return Failure – lunar crash impact Mare Fecunditatis 003.57N 056.50E Luna-20 5,727 Proton 14 February 1972 Sample return Success – returned 0.05 kg of Moon soil back to Earth Mare Fecunditatis 003.57N 056.50E Luna-21 5,950 Proton 8 January 1973 Lunar rover Success – Lunokhod-2 rover traveled 37.0 km across lunar surface LeMonnier Crater 025.85N 030.45E Luna-23 5,800 Proton 28 October 1974 Sample return Failure – Moon landing achieved, but malfunction prevented sample return Mare Crisium 012.00N 062.00E Proton 16 October 1975 Sample return Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Luna-24 5,800 Proton 9 August 1976 Sample return Success – returned 0.17 kg of Moon soil back to Earth Mare Crisium 012.25N 062.20E U.S. uncrewed soft landings (1966–1968) Launch of Surveyor 1. Pete Conrad, commander of Apollo 12, stands next to Surveyor 3 lander. In the background is the Apollo 12 lander, Intrepid. The U.S. robotic Surveyor program was part of an effort to locate a safe site on the Moon for a human landing and test under lunar conditions the radar and landing systems required to make a true controlled touchdown. Five of Surveyor's seven missions made successful uncrewed Moon landings. Surveyor 3 was visited two years after its Moon landing by the crew of Apollo 12. They removed parts of it for examination back on Earth to determine the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment. Mission Mass (kg) Booster Launch date Goal Result Landing zone Lat/Lon Surveyor 1 292 Atlas – Centaur 30 May 1966 Landing Success – 11,000 pictures returned, first U.S. Moon landing Oceanus Procellarum 002.45S 043.22W Surveyor 2 292 Atlas – Centaur 20 September 1966 Landing Failure – midcourse engine malfunction, placing vehicle in unrecoverable tumble; crashed southeast of Copernicus Crater Sinus Medii 004.00S 011.00W Surveyor 3 302 Atlas – Centaur 20 April 1967 Landing Success – 6,000 pictures returned; trench dug to 17.5 cm depth after 18 hr of robot arm use Oceanus Procellarum 002.94S 336.66E Surveyor 4 282 Atlas – Centaur 14 July 1967 Landing Failure – radio contact lost 2.5 minutes before touchdown; perfect automated Moon landing possible but outcome unknown Sinus Medii unknown Surveyor 5 303 Atlas – Centaur 8 September 1967 Landing Success – 19,000 photos returned, first use of alpha scatter soil composition monitor Mare Tranquillitatis 001.41N 023.18E Surveyor 6 300 Atlas – Centaur 7 November 1967 Landing Success – 30,000 photos returned, robot arm and alpha scatter science, engine restart, second landing 2.5 m away from first Sinus Medii 000.46N 358.63E Surveyor 7 306 Atlas – Centaur 7 January 1968 Landing Success – 21,000 photos returned; robot arm and alpha scatter science; laser beams from Earth detected Tycho Crater 041.01S 348.59E Transition from direct ascent landings to lunar orbit operations Within four months of each other in early 1966 the Soviet Union and the United States had accomplished successful Moon landings with uncrewed spacecraft. To the general public both countries had demonstrated roughly equal technical capabilities by returning photographic images from the surface of the Moon. These pictures provided a key affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether or not lunar soil would support upcoming crewed landers with their much greater weight. However, the Luna 9 hard landing of a ruggedized sphere using airbags at a 50-kilometre-per-hour (31 mph) ballistic impact speed had much more in common with the failed 1962 Ranger landing attempts and their planned 160-kilometre-per-hour (99 mph) impacts than with the Surveyor 1 soft landing on three footpads using its radar-controlled, adjustable-thrust retrorocket. While Luna 9 and Surveyor 1 were both major national accomplishments, only Surveyor 1 had reached its landing site employing key technologies that would be needed for a crewed flight. Thus as of mid-1966, the United States had begun to pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the so-called Space Race to land a man on the Moon. A timeline of the space race between 1957 and 1975, with missions from the US and USSR. Advances in other areas were necessary before crewed spacecraft could follow uncrewed ones to the surface of the Moon. Of particular importance was developing the expertise to perform flight operations in lunar orbit. Ranger, Surveyor and initial Luna Moon landing attempts all flew directly to the surface without a lunar orbit. Such direct ascents use a minimum amount of fuel for uncrewed spacecraft on a one-way trip. In contrast, crewed vehicles need additional fuel after a lunar landing to enable a return trip back to Earth for the crew. Leaving this massive amount of required Earth-return fuel in lunar orbit until it is used later in the mission is far more efficient than taking such fuel down to the lunar surface in a Moon landing and then hauling it all back into space yet again, working against lunar gravity both ways. Such considerations lead logically to a lunar orbit rendezvous mission profile for a crewed Moon landing. Accordingly, beginning in mid-1966 both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. naturally progressed into missions featuring lunar orbit as a prerequisite to a crewed Moon landing. The primary goals of these initial uncrewed orbiters were extensive photographic mapping of the entire lunar surface for the selection of crewed landing sites and, for the Soviets, the checkout of radio communications gear that would be used in future soft landings. An unexpected major discovery from initial lunar orbiters were vast volumes of dense materials beneath the surface of the Moon's maria. Such mass concentrations ("mascons") can send a crewed mission dangerously off course in the final minutes of a Moon landing when aiming for a relatively small landing zone that is smooth and safe. Mascons were also found over a longer period of time to greatly disturb the orbits of low-altitude satellites around the Moon, making their orbits unstable and forcing an inevitable crash on the lunar surface in the relatively short period of months to a few years. Controlling the location of impact for spent lunar orbiters can have scientific value. For example, in 1999 the NASA Lunar Prospector orbiter was deliberately targeted to impact a permanently shadowed area of Shoemaker Crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that energy from the impact would vaporize suspected shadowed ice deposits in the crater and liberate a water vapor plume detectable from Earth. No such plume was observed. However, a small vial of ashes from the body of pioneer lunar scientist Eugene Shoemaker was delivered by the Lunar Prospector to the crater named in his honor – currently[when?] the only human remains on the Moon. Soviet lunar orbit satellites (1966–1974) U.S.S.R. mission Mass (kg) Booster Launched Mission goal Mission result Cosmos – 111 Molniya-M 1 March 1966 Lunar orbiter Failure – stranded in low Earth orbit Luna-10 1,582 Molniya-M 31 March 1966 Lunar orbiter Success – 2,738 km x 2,088 km x 72 deg orbit, 178 m period, 60-day science mission Luna-11 1,640 Molniya-M 24 August 1966 Lunar orbiter Success – 2,931 km x 1,898 km x 27 deg orbit, 178 m period, 38-day science mission Luna-12 1,620 Molniya-M 22 October 1966 Lunar orbiter Success – 2,938 km x 1,871 km x 10 deg orbit, 205 m period, 89-day science mission Cosmos-159 1,700 Molniya-M 17 May 1967 Prototype test Success – high Earth orbit crewed landing communications gear radio calibration test Molniya-M 7 February 1968 Lunar orbiter Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit – attempted radio calibration test? Luna-14 1,700 Molniya-M 7 April 1968 Lunar orbiter Success – 870 km x 160 km x 42 deg orbit, 160 m period, unstable orbit, radio calibration test? Luna-19 5,700 Proton 28 September 1971 Lunar orbiter Success – 140 km x 140 km x 41 deg orbit, 121 m period, 388-day science mission Luna-22 5,700 Proton 29 May 1974 Lunar orbiter Success – 222 km x 219 km x 19 deg orbit, 130 m period, 521-day science mission Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon on 3 April 1966. U.S. lunar orbit satellites (1966–1967) U.S. mission Mass (kg) Booster Launched Mission goal Mission result Lunar Orbiter 1 386 Atlas – Agena 10 August 1966 Lunar orbiter Success – 1,160 km X 189 km x 12 deg orbit, 208 m period, 80-day photography mission Lunar Orbiter 2 386 Atlas – Agena 6 November 1966 Lunar orbiter Success – 1,860 km X 52 km x 12 deg orbit, 208 m period, 339-day photography mission Lunar Orbiter 3 386 Atlas – Agena 5 February 1967 Lunar orbiter Success – 1,860 km X 52 km x 21 deg orbit, 208 m period, 246-day photography mission Lunar Orbiter 4 386 Atlas – Agena 4 May 1967 Lunar orbiter Success – 6,111 km X 2,706 km x 86 deg orbit, 721 m period, 180-day photography mission Lunar Orbiter 5 386 Atlas – Agena 1 August 1967 Lunar orbiter Success – 6,023 km X 195 km x 85 deg orbit, 510 m period, 183-day photography mission Soviet circumlunar loop flights (1967–1970) Main article: Soviet crewed lunar programs It is possible to aim a spacecraft from Earth so it will loop around the Moon and return to Earth without entering lunar orbit, following the so-called free return trajectory. Such circumlunar loop missions are simpler than lunar orbit missions because rockets for lunar orbit braking and Earth return are not required. However, a crewed circumlunar loop trip poses significant challenges beyond those found in a crewed low-Earth-orbit mission, offering valuable lessons in preparation for a crewed Moon landing. Foremost among these are mastering the demands of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere upon returning from the Moon. Inhabited Earth-orbiting vehicles such as the Space Shuttle return to Earth from speeds of around 7,500 m/s (27,000 km/h). Due to the effects of gravity, a vehicle returning from the Moon hits Earth's atmosphere at a much higher speed of around 11,000 m/s (40,000 km/h). The g-loading on astronauts during the resulting deceleration can be at the limits of human endurance even during a nominal reentry. Slight variations in the vehicle flight path and reentry angle during a return from the Moon can easily result in fatal levels of deceleration force. Achieving a crewed circumlunar loop flight prior to a crewed lunar landing became a primary goal of the Soviets with their Zond spacecraft program. The first three Zonds were robotic planetary probes; after that, the Zond name was transferred to a completely separate human spaceflight program. The initial focus of these later Zonds was extensive testing of required high-speed reentry techniques. This focus was not shared by the U.S., who chose instead to bypass the stepping stone of a crewed circumlunar loop mission and never developed a separate spacecraft for this purpose. Initial crewed spaceflights in the early 1960s placed a single person in low Earth orbit during the Soviet Vostok and U.S. Mercury programs. A two-flight extension of the Vostok program known as Voskhod effectively used Vostok capsules with their ejection seats removed to achieve Soviet space firsts of multiple person crews in 1964 and spacewalks in early 1965. These capabilities were later demonstrated by the U.S. in ten Gemini low Earth orbit missions throughout 1965 and 1966, using a totally new second-generation spacecraft design that had little in common with the earlier Mercury. These Gemini missions went on to prove techniques for orbital rendezvous and docking crucial to a crewed lunar landing mission profile. After the end of the Gemini program, the Soviet Union began flying their second-generation Zond crewed spacecraft in 1967 with the ultimate goal of looping a cosmonaut around the Moon and returning him or her immediately to Earth. The Zond spacecraft was launched with the simpler and already operational Proton launch rocket, unlike the parallel Soviet human Moon landing effort also underway at the time based on third-generation Soyuz spacecraft requiring development of the advanced N-1 booster. The Soviets thus believed they could achieve a crewed Zond circumlunar flight years before a U.S. human lunar landing and so score a propaganda victory. However, significant development problems delayed the Zond program and the success of the U.S. Apollo lunar landing program led to the eventual termination of the Zond effort. Like Zond, Apollo flights were generally launched on a free return trajectory that would return them to Earth via a circumlunar loop if a service module malfunction failed to place them in lunar orbit. This option was implemented after an explosion aboard the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, which is the only crewed circumlunar loop mission flown to date.[when?] U.S.S.R mission Mass (kg) Booster Launched Mission goal Payload Mission result Cosmos-146 5,400 Proton 10 March 1967 High Earth Orbit uncrewed Partial success – Successfully reached high Earth orbit, but became stranded and was unable to initiate controlled high speed atmospheric reentry test Cosmos-154 5,400 Proton 8 April 1967 High Earth Orbit uncrewed Partial success – Successfully reached high Earth orbit, but became stranded and was unable to initiate controlled high speed atmospheric reentry test Proton 28 September 1967 High Earth Orbit uncrewed Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Proton 22 November 1967 High Earth Orbit uncrewed Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Zond-4 5,140 Proton 2 March 1968 High Earth Orbit uncrewed Partial success – launched successfully to 300,000 km high Earth orbit, high speed reentry test guidance malfunction, intentional self-destruct to prevent landfall outside Soviet Union Proton 23 April 1968 Circumlunar Loop non-human biological payload Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit; launch preparation tank explosion kills three in pad crew Zond-5 5,375 Proton 15 September 1968 Circumlunar Loop non-human biological payload Success – looped around Moon with Earth's first near-lunar life forms, two tortoises and other live biological specimens, and the capsule and payload safely to Earth despite landing off-target outside the Soviet Union in the Indian Ocean Zond-6 5,375 Proton 10 November 1968 Circumlunar Loop non-human biological payload Partial success – looped around Moon, successful reentry, but loss of cabin air pressure caused biological payload death, parachute system malfunction and severe vehicle damage upon landing Proton 20 January 1969 Circumlunar Loop non-human biological payload Failure – booster malfunction, failed to reach Earth orbit Zond-7 5,979 Proton 8 August 1969 Circumlunar Loop non-human biological payload Success – looped around Moon, returned biological payload safely to Earth and landed on-target inside Soviet Union. Only Zond mission whose reentry G-forces would have been survivable by human crew had they been aboard. Zond-8 5,375 Proton 20 October 1970 Circumlunar Loop non-human biological payload Success – looped around Moon, returned biological payload safely to Earth despite landing off-target outside Soviet Union in the Indian Ocean Zond 5 was the first spacecraft to carry life from Earth to the vicinity of the Moon and return, initiating the final lap of the Space Race with its payload of tortoises, insects, plants, and bacteria. Despite the failure suffered in its final moments, the Zond 6 mission was reported by Soviet media as being a success as well. Although hailed worldwide as remarkable achievements, both these Zond missions flew off-nominal reentry trajectories resulting in deceleration forces that would have been fatal to humans. As a result, the Soviets secretly planned to continue uncrewed Zond tests until their reliability to support human flight had been demonstrated. However, due to NASA's continuing problems with the lunar module, and because of CIA reports of a potential Soviet crewed circumlunar flight in late 1968, NASA fatefully changed the flight plan of Apollo 8 from an Earth-orbit lunar module test to a lunar orbit mission scheduled for late December 1968. In early December 1968 the launch window to the Moon opened for the Soviet launch site in Baikonur, giving the USSR their final chance to beat the US to the Moon. Cosmonauts went on alert and asked to fly the Zond spacecraft then in final countdown at Baikonur on the first human trip to the Moon. Ultimately, however, the Soviet Politburo decided the risk of crew death was unacceptable given the combined poor performance to that point of Zond/Proton and so scrubbed the launch of a crewed Soviet lunar mission. Their decision proved to be a wise one, since this unnumbered Zond mission was destroyed in another uncrewed test when it was finally launched several weeks later. By this time flights of the third generation U.S. Apollo spacecraft had begun. Far more capable than the Zond, the Apollo spacecraft had the necessary rocket power to slip into and out of lunar orbit and to make course adjustments required for a safe reentry during the return to Earth. The Apollo 8 mission carried out the first human trip to the Moon on 24 December 1968, certifying the Saturn V booster for crewed use and flying not a circumlunar loop but instead a full ten orbits around the Moon before returning safely to Earth. Apollo 10 then performed a full dress rehearsal of a crewed Moon landing in May 1969. This mission orbited within 47,400 feet (14.4 km) of the lunar surface, performing necessary low-altitude mapping of trajectory-altering mascons using a factory prototype lunar module too heavy to land. With the failure of the robotic Soviet sample return Moon landing attempt Luna 15 in July 1969, the stage was set for Apollo 11. Human Moon landings (1969–1972) The U.S. Saturn V and the Soviet N1. US strategy Main article: Apollo program § Political pressure builds Plans for human Moon exploration began during the Eisenhower administration. In a series of mid-1950s articles in Collier's magazine, Wernher von Braun had popularized the idea of a crewed expedition to establish a lunar base. A human Moon landing posed several daunting technical challenges to the US and USSR. Besides guidance and weight management, atmospheric re-entry without ablative overheating was a major hurdle. After the Soviets launched Sputnik, von Braun promoted a plan for the US Army to establish a military lunar outpost by 1965. After the early Soviet successes, especially Yuri Gagarin's flight, US President John F. Kennedy looked for a project that would capture the public imagination. He asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to make recommendations on a scientific endeavor that would prove US world leadership. The proposals included non-space options such as massive irrigation projects to benefit the Third World. The Soviets, at the time, had more powerful rockets than the US, which gave them an advantage in some kinds of space mission. Advances in US nuclear weapon technology had led to smaller, lighter warheads; the Soviets' were much heavier, and the powerful R-7 rocket was developed to carry them. More modest missions such as flying around the Moon, or a space lab in lunar orbit (both were proposed by Kennedy to von Braun), offered too much advantage to the Soviets; landing, however, would capture the world's imagination. Apollo landing sites Johnson had championed the US human spaceflight program ever since Sputnik, sponsoring legislation to create NASA while he was still a senator. When Kennedy asked him in 1961 to research the best achievement to counter the Soviets' lead, Johnson responded that the US had an even chance of beating them to a crewed lunar landing, but not for anything less. Kennedy seized on Apollo as the ideal focus for efforts in space. He ensured continuing funding, shielding space spending from the 1963 tax cut, but diverting money from other NASA scientific projects. These diversions dismayed NASA's leader, James E. Webb, who perceived the need for NASA's support from the scientific community. The Moon landing required development of the large Saturn V launch vehicle, which achieved a perfect record: zero catastrophic failures or launch vehicle-caused mission failures in thirteen launches. For the program to succeed, its proponents would have to defeat criticism from politicians both on the left (more money for social programs) and on the right (more money for the military). By emphasizing the scientific payoff and playing on fears of Soviet space dominance, Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33 percent two years earlier. After Johnson became President in 1963, his continuing defense of the program allowed it to succeed in 1969, as Kennedy had planned. Soviet strategy Main article: Soviet Moonshot Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said in October 1963 the USSR was "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the Moon," while insisting that the Soviets had not dropped out of the race. Only after another year did the USSR fully commit itself to a Moon-landing attempt, which ultimately failed. At the same time, Kennedy had suggested various joint programs, including a possible Moon landing by Soviet and U.S. astronauts and the development of better weather-monitoring satellites, eventually resulting in the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Khrushchev, sensing an attempt by Kennedy to steal Russian space technology, rejected the idea at first: if the USSR went to the Moon, it would go alone. Though Khrushchev was eventually warming up to the idea, but the realization of a joint Moon landing was choked by Kennedy's assassination.[27] Sergey Korolev, the Soviet space program's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz craft and the N1 launcher rocket that would have the capability of carrying out a human Moon landing. Khrushchev directed Korolev's design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a human cislunar flight in 1966. In 1964 the new Soviet leadership gave Korolev the backing for a Moon landing effort and brought all crewed projects under his direction. With Korolev's death and the failure of the first Soyuz flight in 1967, coordination of the Soviet Moon landing program quickly unraveled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for a mission that would have placed Alexei Leonov on the Moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a crewed landing suffered first delay and then cancellation. A program of automated return vehicles was begun, in the hope of being the first to return lunar rocks. This had several failures. It eventually succeeded with Luna 16 in 1970.[28] But this had little impact, because the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 lunar landings and rock returns had already taken place by then. Apollo missions Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, poses for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during an Apollo 11 Extravehicular Activity (EVA) on the lunar surface. In total, twenty-four U.S. astronauts have traveled to the Moon. Three have made the trip twice, and twelve have walked on its surface. Apollo 8 was a lunar-orbit-only mission, Apollo 10 included undocking and Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI), followed by LM staging to CSM redocking, while Apollo 13, originally scheduled as a landing, ended up as a lunar fly-by, by means of free return trajectory; thus, none of these missions made landings. Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 were Earth-orbit-only missions. Apart from the inherent dangers of crewed Moon expeditions as seen with Apollo 13, one reason for their cessation according to astronaut Alan Bean is the cost it imposes in government subsidies.[29] Human Moon landings Mission name Lunar lander Lunar landing date Lunar liftoff date Lunar landing site Duration on lunar surface (DD:HH:MM) Crew Number of EVAs Total EVA Time (HH:MM) Apollo 11 Eagle 20 July 1969 21 July 1969 Sea of Tranquility 0:21:31 Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin 1 2:31 Apollo 12 Intrepid 19 November 1969 21 November 1969 Ocean of Storms 1:07:31 Charles "Pete" Conrad, Alan Bean 2 7:45 Apollo 14 Antares 5 February 1971 6 February 1971 Fra Mauro 1:09:30 Alan B. Shepard, Edgar Mitchell 2 9:21 Apollo 15 Falcon 30 July 1971 2 August 1971 Hadley Rille 2:18:55 David Scott, James Irwin 3 18:33 Apollo 16 Orion 21 April 1972 24 April 1972 Descartes Highlands 2:23:02 John Young, Charles Duke 3 20:14 Apollo 17 Challenger 11 December 1972 14 December 1972 Taurus–Littrow 3:02:59 Eugene Cernan, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt 3 22:04 Other aspects of the successful Apollo landings Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land the first Apollo Lunar Module on the Moon, 20 July 1969, creating Tranquility Base. Apollo 11 was the first of six Apollo program lunar landings. President Richard Nixon had speechwriter William Safire prepare a condolence speech for delivery in case Armstrong and Aldrin became marooned on the Moon's surface and could not be rescued.[30] In 1951, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke forecast that a man would reach the Moon by 1978.[31] On 16 August 2006, the Associated Press reported that NASA is missing the original Slow-scan television tapes (which were made before the scan conversion for conventional TV) of the Apollo 11 Moon walk. Some news outlets have mistakenly reported the SSTV tapes found in Western Australia, but those tapes were only recordings of data from the Apollo 11 Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package.[32] The tapes were found in 2008 and sold at auction in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the landing.[33] Scientists believe the six American flags planted by astronauts have been bleached white because of more than 40 years of exposure to solar radiation.[34] Using LROC images, five of the six American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11.[35] Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported that the flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent engine during liftoff of Apollo 11.[35] Late 20th century–Early 21st century uncrewed crash landings Hiten (Japan) Launched on 24 January 1990, 11:46 UTC. At the end of its mission, the Japanese lunar orbiter Hiten was commanded to crash into the lunar surface and did so on 10 April 1993 at 18:03:25.7 UT (11 April 03:03:25.7 JST).[36] Lunar Prospector (US) Lunar Prospector was launched on 7 January 1998. The mission ended on 31 July 1999, when the orbiter was deliberately crashed into a crater near the lunar south pole after the presence of water ice was successfully detected.[37] SMART-1 (ESA) Launched 27 September 2003, 23:14 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. At the end of its mission, the ESA lunar orbiter SMART-1 performed a controlled crash into the Moon, at about 2 km/s. The time of the crash was 3 September 2006, at 5:42 UTC.[38] Chandrayaan-1 (India) The impactor, the Moon Impact Probe, an instrument on Chandrayaan-1 mission, impacted near Shackleton crater at the south pole of the lunar surface at 14 November 2008, 20:31 IST. Chandrayaan-1 was launched on 22 October 2008, 00:52 UTC.[39] Chang'e 1 (China) The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 1, executed a controlled crash onto the surface of the Moon on 1 March 2009, 20:44 GMT, after a 16-month mission. Chang'e 1 was launched on 24 October 2007, 10:05 UTC.[40] SELENE (Japan) SELENE or Kaguya after successfully orbiting the Moon for a year and eight months, the main orbiter was instructed to impact on the lunar surface near the crater Gill at 18:25 UTC on 10 June 2009.[41] SELENE or Kaguya was launched on 14 September 2007. LCROSS (US) The LCROSS data collecting shepherding spacecraft was launched together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on 18 June 2009 on board an Atlas V rocket with a Centaur upper stage. On 9 October 2009, at 11:31 UTC, the Centaur upper stage impacted the lunar surface, releasing the kinetic energy equivalent of detonating approximately 2 tons of TNT (8.86 GJ).[42] Six minutes later at 11:37 UTC, the LCROSS shepherding spacecraft also impacted the surface.[43] GRAIL (US) The GRAIL mission consisted of two small spacecraft: GRAIL A (Ebb), and GRAIL B (Flow). They were launched on 10 September 2011 on board a Delta II rocket. GRAIL A separated from the rocket about nine minutes after launch, and GRAIL B followed about eight minutes later.[44][45] The first probe entered orbit on 31 December 2011 and the second followed on 1 January 2012.[46] The two spacecraft impacted the Lunar surface on 17 December 2012.[47] LADEE (US) LADEE was launched on 7 September 2013.[48] The mission ended on 18 April 2014, when the spacecraft's controllers intentionally crashed LADEE into the far side of the Moon,[49][50] which, later, was determined to be near the eastern rim of Sundman V crater.[51][52] 21st century uncrewed soft landings and attempts Chang'e 3 (China) On 14 December 2013 at 13:12 UTC[53] Chang'e 3 soft-landed a rover on the Moon. This was the first lunar soft landing since Luna 24 on 22 August 1976.[54] Chang'e 4 (China) On 3 January 2019 at 2:26 UTC Chang'e 4 became the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon.[55] Beresheet (Israel) On 22 February 2019 at 01:45 UTC, SpaceX launched the Beresheet lunar lander, developed by Israel's SpaceIL organization. Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a Falcon 9 booster, with the lander being one of three payloads on the rocket. Beresheet arrived near the Moon using a slow but fuel-efficient trajectory. Taking six weeks and several increasingly large orbits around the Earth, it first achieved a large elliptical orbit around Earth with an apogee near 400,000 kilometers (250,000 mi). At that point, with a short deceleration burn, it was caught by the Moon's gravity in a highly elliptical lunar orbit, an orbit which was circularized and reduced in diameter over a week's time, before attempting a landing on the Moon's surface on 11 April 2019. The mission was the first Israeli, and the first privately funded, lunar landing attempt.[56] SpaceIL was originally conceived in 2011 as a venture to pursue the Google Lunar X Prize. On 11 April 2019 Beresheet crashed on the surface of the Moon, as a result of a main engine failure in the final descent. The Beresheet lunar lander's target landing destination was within Mare Serenitatis, a vast volcanic basin on the Moon's northern near side. Despite the failure, the mission represents the closest a private entity has come to a soft lunar landing.[57] Chandrayaan 2 (India) ISRO, the Indian National Space agency, launched Chandrayaan 2 on 22 July 2019.[58][59] It has 3 major modules: Orbiter, Lander and Rover. Each of these modules has scientific instruments from scientific research institutes in India and the US.[60] The 3,890 kg (8,580 lb) spacecraft was launched by the GSLV Mk III.[61] On 7 September 2019 at 1:50 IST Chandryaan 2's Vikram lander started the soft landing sequence. Contact was lost on 2.1 km (1.3 mi) above the lunar surface after the rough braking phase, and was not regained.[62] From the images of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and chandrayaan orbiter it was found that the Vikram lander had crashed on the Moon and was destroyed. Chang'e 5 (China) On 6 December 2020 at 21:42 UTC Chang'e 5 landed and collected the first lunar rock samples in over 40 years, and then returned the samples to Earth.[63][64] Landings on moons of other Solar System bodies Progress in space exploration has recently broadened the phrase moon landing to include other moons in the Solar System as well. The Huygens probe of the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn performed a successful moon landing on Titan in 2005. Similarly, the Soviet probe Phobos 2 came within 120 mi (190 km) of performing a landing on Mars' moon Phobos in 1989 before radio contact with that lander was suddenly lost. A similar Russian sample return mission called Fobos-Grunt ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian) launched in November 2011, but stalled in low Earth orbit. There is widespread interest in performing a future landing on Jupiter's moon Europa to drill down and explore the possible liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface.[65] Proposed future missions Main article: List of missions to the Moon § Proposed After the failure of the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to re-attempt a soft landing with a third lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan-3. It is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2022.[66] The Lunar Polar Exploration Mission is a robotic space mission concept by ISRO and Japan's space agency JAXA[67][68] that would send a lunar rover and lander to explore south pole region of the Moon in 2024.[69][70] JAXA is likely to provide launch service using the future H3 rocket, along with responsibility for the rover. ISRO would be responsible for the lander.[68][71] Russia's Luna 25 lander is expected to launch in May 2022.[72] On 11 December 2017, US President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, which directed NASA to return to the Moon with a crewed mission, for "long-term exploration and use" and missions to other planets.[73] On 26 March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence formally announced that the mission will include the first female lunar astronaut.[74] The Artemis program has the goal of returning to the Moon with new launch systems.[75] Historical empirical evidence Main article: Moon landing conspiracy theories Many conspiracists hold that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax;[76] however, empirical evidence is readily available to show that human Moon landings did occur. Anyone on Earth with an appropriate laser and telescope system can bounce laser beams off three retroreflector arrays left on the Moon by Apollo 11,[77] 14 and 15, verifying deployment of the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment at historically documented Apollo Moon landing sites and so proving equipment constructed on Earth was successfully transported to the surface of the Moon. In addition, in August 2009 NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter began to send back high resolution photos of the Apollo landing sites. These photos show the large descent stages of the six Apollo Lunar Modules which were left behind, the tracks of the three Lunar Roving Vehicles, and the paths left by the twelve astronauts as they walked in the lunar dust.[78] In 2016, then-U.S. president Barack Obama acknowledged that the Moon landing was not a hoax and publicly thanked the members of the television show Mythbusters for publicly proving as much in season 6 episode 2.[79]******** The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which succeeded in preparing and landing the first humans on the Moon from 1968 to 1972. It was first conceived during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration as a three-person spacecraft to follow the one-person Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third US human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by the two-person Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo. Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module (LM) on July 20, 1969, and walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module (CSM), and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last, Apollo 17, in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, twelve people walked on the Moon. Buzz Aldrin (pictured) walked on the Moon with Neil Armstrong, on Apollo 11, July 20–21, 1969. Earthrise, the iconic 1968 image from Apollo 8 taken by astronaut William Anders Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first crewed flight in 1968. It encountered a major setback in 1967 when an Apollo 1 cabin fire killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test. After the first successful landing, sufficient flight hardware remained for nine follow-on landings with a plan for extended lunar geological and astrophysical exploration. Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. Five of the remaining six missions achieved successful landings, but the Apollo 13 landing was prevented by an oxygen tank explosion in transit to the Moon, which destroyed the service module's capability to provide electrical power, crippling the CSM's propulsion and life support systems. The crew returned to Earth safely by using the lunar module as a "lifeboat" for these functions. Apollo used the Saturn family of rockets as launch vehicles, which were also used for an Apollo Applications Program, which consisted of Skylab, a space station that supported three crewed missions in 1973–1974, and the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, a joint United States-Soviet Union low Earth orbit mission in 1975. Apollo set several major human spaceflight milestones. It stands alone in sending crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit. Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, and Apollo 11 was the first crewed spacecraft to land humans on one. Overall the Apollo program returned 842 pounds (382 kg) of lunar rocks and soil to Earth, greatly contributing to the understanding of the Moon's composition and geological history. The program laid the foundation for NASA's subsequent human spaceflight capability, and funded construction of its Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center. Apollo also spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and human spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. Contents 1 Background 1.1 Origin and spacecraft feasibility studies 1.2 Political pressure builds 2 NASA expansion 2.1 Manned Spacecraft Center 2.2 Launch Operations Center 2.3 Organization 3 Choosing a mission mode 4 Spacecraft 4.1 Command and service module 4.2 Apollo Lunar Module 5 Launch vehicles 5.1 Little Joe II 5.2 Saturn I 5.3 Saturn IB 5.4 Saturn V 6 Astronauts 7 Lunar mission profile 7.1 Profile variations 8 Development history 8.1 Uncrewed flight tests 8.2 Preparation for crewed flight 8.2.1 Program delays 8.2.2 Apollo 1 fire 8.2.3 Uncrewed Saturn V and LM tests 8.3 Crewed development missions 8.4 Production lunar landings 8.4.1 Mission cutbacks 8.4.2 Extended missions 8.4.3 Canceled missions 9 Mission summary 10 Samples returned 11 Costs 12 Apollo Applications Program 13 Recent observations 14 Legacy 14.1 Science and engineering 14.2 Cultural impact 14.3 Apollo 11 broadcast data restoration project 15 NASA spinoffs from Apollo 15.1 Cordless power tools 15.2 Fireproof material 15.3 Heart monitors 15.4 Solar panels 15.5 Digital imaging 15.6 Liquid methane 16 Depictions on film 16.1 Documentaries 16.2 Docudramas 16.3 Fictional 17 See also 18 References 18.1 Citations 18.2 Sources 19 Further reading 20 External links 20.1 NASA reports 20.2 Multimedia Background[edit] Origin and spacecraft feasibility studies[edit] Main article: Apollo spacecraft feasibility study The Apollo program was conceived during the Eisenhower administration in early 1960, as a follow-up to Project Mercury. While the Mercury capsule could support only one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, Apollo would carry three. Possible missions included ferrying crews to a space station, circumlunar flights, and eventual crewed lunar landings. The program was named after Apollo, the Greek god of light, music, and the Sun, by NASA manager Abe Silverstein, who later said, "I was naming the spacecraft like I'd name my baby."[3] Silverstein chose the name at home one evening, early in 1960, because he felt "Apollo riding his chariot across the Sun was appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed program."[4] In July 1960, NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden announced the Apollo program to industry representatives at a series of Space Task Group conferences. Preliminary specifications were laid out for a spacecraft with a mission module cabin separate from the command module (piloting and reentry cabin), and a propulsion and equipment module. On August 30, a feasibility study competition was announced, and on October 25, three study contracts were awarded to General Dynamics/Convair, General Electric, and the Glenn L. Martin Company. Meanwhile, NASA performed its own in-house spacecraft design studies led by Maxime Faget, to serve as a gauge to judge and monitor the three industry designs.[5] Political pressure builds[edit] Main article: Space Race In November 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president after a campaign that promised American superiority over the Soviet Union in the fields of space exploration and missile defense. Up to the election of 1960, Kennedy had been speaking out against the "missile gap" that he and many other senators felt had developed between the Soviet Union and the United States due to the inaction of President Eisenhower.[6] Beyond military power, Kennedy used aerospace technology as a symbol of national prestige, pledging to make the US not "first but, first and, first if, but first period".[7] Despite Kennedy's rhetoric, he did not immediately come to a decision on the status of the Apollo program once he became president. He knew little about the technical details of the space program, and was put off by the massive financial commitment required by a crewed Moon landing.[8] When Kennedy's newly appointed NASA Administrator James E. Webb requested a 30 percent budget increase for his agency, Kennedy supported an acceleration of NASA's large booster program but deferred a decision on the broader issue.[9] On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union. At a meeting of the US House Committee on Science and Astronautics one day after Gagarin's flight, many congressmen pledged their support for a crash program aimed at ensuring that America would catch up.[10] Kennedy was circumspect in his response to the news, refusing to make a commitment on America's response to the Soviets.[11] President Kennedy delivers his proposal to put a man on the Moon before a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961 On April 20, Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking Johnson to look into the status of America's space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up.[12][13] Johnson responded approximately one week later, concluding that "we are neither making maximum effort nor achieving results necessary if this country is to reach a position of leadership."[14][15] His memo concluded that a crewed Moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first.[14] On May 25, 1961, twenty days after the first US crewed spaceflight Freedom 7, Kennedy proposed the crewed Moon landing in a Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs: 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 that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.[16] Full text  NASA expansion[edit] At the time of Kennedy's proposal, only one American had flown in space—less than a month earlier—and NASA had not yet sent an astronaut into orbit. Even some NASA employees doubted whether Kennedy's ambitious goal could be met.[17] By 1963, Kennedy even came close to agreeing to a joint US-USSR Moon mission, to eliminate duplication of effort.[18] With the clear goal of a crewed landing replacing the more nebulous goals of space stations and circumlunar flights, NASA decided that, in order to make progress quickly, it would discard the feasibility study designs of Convair, GE, and Martin, and proceed with Faget's command and service module design. The mission module was determined to be useful only as an extra room, and therefore unnecessary.[19] They used Faget's design as the specification for another competition for spacecraft procurement bids in October 1961. On November 28, 1961, it was announced that North American Aviation had won the contract, although its bid was not rated as good as Martin's. Webb, Dryden and Robert Seamans chose it in preference due to North American's longer association with NASA and its predecessor.[20] Landing humans on the Moon by the end of 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources ($25 billion; $158 billion in 2020 US dollars)[2] ever made by any nation in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.[21] On July 1, 1960, NASA established the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. MSFC designed the heavy lift-class Saturn launch vehicles, which would be required for Apollo.[22] Manned Spacecraft Center[edit] Main article: Johnson Space Center It became clear that managing the Apollo program would exceed the capabilities of Robert R. Gilruth's Space Task Group, which had been directing the nation's crewed space program from NASA's Langley Research Center. So Gilruth was given authority to grow his organization into a new NASA center, the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). A site was chosen in Houston, Texas, on land donated by Rice University, and Administrator Webb announced the conversion on September 19, 1961.[23] It was also clear NASA would soon outgrow its practice of controlling missions from its Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch facilities in Florida, so a new Mission Control Center would be included in the MSC.[24] President Kennedy speaks at Rice University, September 12, 1962 (17 min, 47 s) In September 1962, by which time two Project Mercury astronauts had orbited the Earth, Gilruth had moved his organization to rented space in Houston, and construction of the MSC facility was under way, Kennedy visited Rice to reiterate his challenge in a famous speech: But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? ... We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ...[25] Full text  The MSC was completed in September 1963. It was renamed by the US Congress in honor of Lyndon Johnson soon after his death in 1973.[26] Launch Operations Center[edit] Main article: Kennedy Space Center It also became clear that Apollo would outgrow the Canaveral launch facilities in Florida. The two newest launch complexes were already being built for the Saturn I and IB rockets at the northernmost end: LC-34 and LC-37. But an even bigger facility would be needed for the mammoth rocket required for the crewed lunar mission, so land acquisition was started in July 1961 for a Launch Operations Center (LOC) immediately north of Canaveral at Merritt Island. The design, development and construction of the center was conducted by Kurt H. Debus, a member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's original V-2 rocket engineering team. Debus was named the LOC's first Director.[27] Construction began in November 1962. Following Kennedy's death, President Johnson issued an executive order on November 29, 1963, to rename the LOC and Cape Canaveral in honor of Kennedy.[28] George Mueller, Wernher von Braun, and Eberhard Rees watch the AS-101 launch from the firing room The LOC included Launch Complex 39, a Launch Control Center, and a 130-million-cubic-foot (3,700,000 m3) Vertical Assembly Building (VAB).[29] in which the space vehicle (launch vehicle and spacecraft) would be assembled on a mobile launcher platform and then moved by a crawler-transporter to one of several launch pads. Although at least three pads were planned, only two, designated A and B, were completed in October 1965. The LOC also included an Operations and Checkout Building (OCB) to which Gemini and Apollo spacecraft were initially received prior to being mated to their launch vehicles. The Apollo spacecraft could be tested in two vacuum chambers capable of simulating atmospheric pressure at altitudes up to 250,000 feet (76 km), which is nearly a vacuum.[30][31] Organization[edit] Administrator Webb realized that in order to keep Apollo costs under control, he had to develop greater project management skills in his organization, so he recruited Dr. George E. Mueller for a high management job. Mueller accepted, on the condition that he have a say in NASA reorganization necessary to effectively administer Apollo. Webb then worked with Associate Administrator (later Deputy Administrator) Seamans to reorganize the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF).[32] On July 23, 1963, Webb announced Mueller's appointment as Deputy Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, to replace then Associate Administrator D. Brainerd Holmes on his retirement effective September 1. Under Webb's reorganization, the directors of the Manned Spacecraft Center (Gilruth), Marshall Space Flight Center (von Braun), and the Launch Operations Center (Debus) reported to Mueller.[33] Based on his industry experience on Air Force missile projects, Mueller realized some skilled managers could be found among high-ranking officers in the U.S. Air Force, so he got Webb's permission to recruit General Samuel C. Phillips, who gained a reputation for his effective management of the Minuteman program, as OMSF program controller. Phillips's superior officer Bernard A. Schriever agreed to loan Phillips to NASA, along with a staff of officers under him, on the condition that Phillips be made Apollo Program Director. Mueller agreed, and Phillips managed Apollo from January 1964, until it achieved the first human landing in July 1969, after which he returned to Air Force duty.[34] Choosing a mission mode[edit] See also: Moon landing John Houbolt explaining the LOR concept Early Apollo configuration for Direct Ascent and Earth Orbit Rendezvous, 1961 Once Kennedy had defined a goal, the Apollo mission planners were faced with the challenge of designing a spacecraft that could meet it while minimizing risk to human life, cost, and demands on technology and astronaut skill. Four possible mission modes were considered: Direct Ascent: The spacecraft would be launched as a unit and travel directly to the lunar surface, without first going into lunar orbit. A 50,000-pound (23,000 kg) Earth return ship would land all three astronauts atop a 113,000-pound (51,000 kg) descent propulsion stage,[35] which would be left on the Moon. This design would have required development of the extremely powerful Saturn C-8 or Nova launch vehicle to carry a 163,000-pound (74,000 kg) payload to the Moon.[36] Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR): Multiple rocket launches (up to 15 in some plans) would carry parts of the Direct Ascent spacecraft and propulsion units for translunar injection (TLI). These would be assembled into a single spacecraft in Earth orbit. Lunar Surface Rendezvous: Two spacecraft would be launched in succession. The first, an automated vehicle carrying propellant for the return to Earth, would land on the Moon, to be followed some time later by the crewed vehicle. Propellant would have to be transferred from the automated vehicle to the crewed vehicle.[37] Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR): This turned out to be the winning configuration, which achieved the goal with Apollo 11 on July 24, 1969: a single Saturn V launched a 96,886-pound (43,947 kg) spacecraft that was composed of a 63,608-pound (28,852 kg) Apollo command and service module which remained in orbit around the Moon and a 33,278-pound (15,095 kg) two-stage Apollo Lunar Module spacecraft which was flown by two astronauts to the surface, flown back to dock with the command module and was then discarded.[38] Landing the smaller spacecraft on the Moon, and returning an even smaller part (10,042 pounds or 4,555 kilograms) to lunar orbit, minimized the total mass to be launched from Earth, but this was the last method initially considered because of the perceived risk of rendezvous and docking. In early 1961, direct ascent was generally the mission mode in favor at NASA. Many engineers feared that rendezvous and docking, maneuvers that had not been attempted in Earth orbit, would be nearly impossible in lunar orbit. LOR advocates including John Houbolt at Langley Research Center emphasized the important weight reductions that were offered by the LOR approach. Throughout 1960 and 1961, Houbolt campaigned for the recognition of LOR as a viable and practical option. Bypassing the NASA hierarchy, he sent a series of memos and reports on the issue to Associate Administrator Robert Seamans; while acknowledging that he spoke "somewhat as a voice in the wilderness", Houbolt pleaded that LOR should not be discounted in studies of the question.[39] Seamans's establishment of an ad hoc committee headed by his special technical assistant Nicholas E. Golovin in July 1961, to recommend a launch vehicle to be used in the Apollo program, represented a turning point in NASA's mission mode decision.[40] This committee recognized that the chosen mode was an important part of the launch vehicle choice, and recommended in favor of a hybrid EOR-LOR mode. Its consideration of LOR—as well as Houbolt's ceaseless work—played an important role in publicizing the workability of the approach. In late 1961 and early 1962, members of the Manned Spacecraft Center began to come around to support LOR, including the newly hired deputy director of the Office of Manned Space Flight, Joseph Shea, who became a champion of LOR.[41] The engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), which had much to lose from the decision, took longer to become convinced of its merits, but their conversion was announced by Wernher von Braun at a briefing on June 7, 1962.[42] But even after NASA reached internal agreement, it was far from smooth sailing. Kennedy's science advisor Jerome Wiesner, who had expressed his opposition to human spaceflight to Kennedy before the President took office,[43] and had opposed the decision to land people on the Moon, hired Golovin, who had left NASA, to chair his own "Space Vehicle Panel", ostensibly to monitor, but actually to second-guess NASA's decisions on the Saturn V launch vehicle and LOR by forcing Shea, Seamans, and even Webb to defend themselves, delaying its formal announcement to the press on July 11, 1962, and forcing Webb to still hedge the decision as "tentative".[44] Wiesner kept up the pressure, even making the disagreement public during a two-day September visit by the President to Marshall Space Flight Center. Wiesner blurted out "No, that's no good" in front of the press, during a presentation by von Braun. Webb jumped in and defended von Braun, until Kennedy ended the squabble by stating that the matter was "still subject to final review". Webb held firm and issued a request for proposal to candidate Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) contractors. Wiesner finally relented, unwilling to settle the dispute once and for all in Kennedy's office, because of the President's involvement with the October Cuban Missile Crisis, and fear of Kennedy's support for Webb. NASA announced the selection of Grumman as the LEM contractor in November 1962.[45] Space historian James Hansen concludes that: Without NASA's adoption of this stubbornly held minority opinion in 1962, the United States may still have reached the Moon, but almost certainly it would not have been accomplished by the end of the 1960s, President Kennedy's target date.[46] The LOR method had the advantage of allowing the lander spacecraft to be used as a "lifeboat" in the event of a failure of the command ship. Some documents prove this theory was discussed before and after the method was chosen. In 1964 an MSC study concluded, "The LM [as lifeboat] ... was finally dropped, because no single reasonable CSM failure could be identified that would prohibit use of the SPS."[47] Ironically, just such a failure happened on Apollo 13 when an oxygen tank explosion left the CSM without electrical power. The lunar module provided propulsion, electrical power and life support to get the crew home safely.[48] Spacecraft[edit] Main article: Apollo (spacecraft) An Apollo boilerplate command module is on exhibit in the Meteor Crater Visitor Center in Winslow, Arizona. Faget's preliminary Apollo design employed a cone-shaped command module, supported by one of several service modules providing propulsion and electrical power, sized appropriately for the space station, cislunar, and lunar landing missions. Once Kennedy's Moon landing goal became official, detailed design began of a command and service module (CSM) in which the crew would spend the entire direct-ascent mission and lift off from the lunar surface for the return trip, after being soft-landed by a larger landing propulsion module. The final choice of lunar orbit rendezvous changed the CSM's role to the translunar ferry used to transport the crew, along with a new spacecraft, the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM, later shortened to LM (Lunar Module) but still pronounced /ˈlɛm/) which would take two individuals to the lunar surface and return them to the CSM.[49] Command and service module[edit] Main article: Apollo command and service module Apollo 15 CSM in lunar orbit The command module (CM) was the conical crew cabin, designed to carry three astronauts from launch to lunar orbit and back to an Earth ocean landing. It was the only component of the Apollo spacecraft to survive without major configuration changes as the program evolved from the early Apollo study designs. Its exterior was covered with an ablative heat shield, and had its own reaction control system (RCS) engines to control its attitude and steer its atmospheric entry path. Parachutes were carried to slow its descent to splashdown. The module was 11.42 feet (3.48 m) tall, 12.83 feet (3.91 m) in diameter, and weighed approximately 12,250 pounds (5,560 kg).[50] A cylindrical service module (SM) supported the command module, with a service propulsion engine and an RCS with propellants, and a fuel cell power generation system with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen reactants. A high-gain S-band antenna was used for long-distance communications on the lunar flights. On the extended lunar missions, an orbital scientific instrument package was carried. The service module was discarded just before reentry. The module was 24.6 feet (7.5 m) long and 12.83 feet (3.91 m) in diameter. The initial lunar flight version weighed approximately 51,300 pounds (23,300 kg) fully fueled, while a later version designed to carry a lunar orbit scientific instrument package weighed just over 54,000 pounds (24,000 kg).[50] North American Aviation won the contract to build the CSM, and also the second stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle for NASA. Because the CSM design was started early before the selection of lunar orbit rendezvous, the service propulsion engine was sized to lift the CSM off the Moon, and thus was oversized to about twice the thrust required for translunar flight.[51] Also, there was no provision for docking with the lunar module. A 1964 program definition study concluded that the initial design should be continued as Block I which would be used for early testing, while Block II, the actual lunar spacecraft, would incorporate the docking equipment and take advantage of the lessons learned in Block I development.[49] Apollo Lunar Module[edit] Main article: Apollo Lunar Module Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle on the Moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong The Apollo Lunar Module (LM) was designed to descend from lunar orbit to land two astronauts on the Moon and take them back to orbit to rendezvous with the command module. Not designed to fly through the Earth's atmosphere or return to Earth, its fuselage was designed totally without aerodynamic considerations and was of an extremely lightweight construction. It consisted of separate descent and ascent stages, each with its own engine. The descent stage contained storage for the descent propellant, surface stay consumables, and surface exploration equipment. The ascent stage contained the crew cabin, ascent propellant, and a reaction control system. The initial LM model weighed approximately 33,300 pounds (15,100 kg), and allowed surface stays up to around 34 hours. An extended lunar module weighed over 36,200 pounds (16,400 kg), and allowed surface stays of more than three days.[50] The contract for design and construction of the lunar module was awarded to Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, and the project was overseen by Thomas J. Kelly.[52] Launch vehicles[edit] Four Apollo rocket assemblies, drawn to scale: Little Joe II, Saturn I, Saturn IB, and Saturn V Before the Apollo program began, Wernher von Braun and his team of rocket engineers had started work on plans for very large launch vehicles, the Saturn series, and the even larger Nova series. In the midst of these plans, von Braun was transferred from the Army to NASA and was made Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The initial direct ascent plan to send the three-person Apollo command and service module directly to the lunar surface, on top of a large descent rocket stage, would require a Nova-class launcher, with a lunar payload capability of over 180,000 pounds (82,000 kg).[53] The June 11, 1962, decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous enabled the Saturn V to replace the Nova, and the MSFC proceeded to develop the Saturn rocket family for Apollo.[54] Since Apollo, like Mercury, used more than one launch vehicle for space missions, NASA used spacecraft-launch vehicle combination series numbers: AS-10x for Saturn I, AS-20x for Saturn IB, and AS-50x for Saturn V (compare Mercury-Redstone 3, Mercury-Atlas 6) to designate and plan all missions, rather than numbering them sequentially as in Project Gemini. This was changed by the time human flights began.[55] Little Joe II[edit] Main article: Little Joe II Since Apollo, like Mercury, would require a launch escape system (LES) in case of a launch failure, a relatively small rocket was required for qualification flight testing of this system. A rocket bigger than the Little Joe used by Mercury would be required, so the Little Joe II was built by General Dynamics/Convair. After an August 1963 qualification test flight,[56] four LES test flights (A-001 through 004) were made at the White Sands Missile Range between May 1964 and January 1966.[57] Saturn I[edit] Main article: Saturn I A Saturn IB rocket launches Apollo 7, 1968 Saturn I, the first US heavy lift launch vehicle, was initially planned to launch partially equipped CSMs in low Earth orbit tests. The S-I first stage burned RP-1 with liquid oxygen (LOX) oxidizer in eight clustered Rocketdyne H-1 engines, to produce 1,500,000 pounds-force (6,670 kN) of thrust. The S-IV second stage used six liquid hydrogen-fueled Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engines with 90,000 pounds-force (400 kN) of thrust. The S-V third stage flew inactively on Saturn I four times.[58] The first four Saturn I test flights were launched from LC-34, with only the first stage live, carrying dummy upper stages filled with water. The first flight with a live S-IV was launched from LC-37. This was followed by five launches of boilerplate CSMs (designated AS-101 through AS-105) into orbit in 1964 and 1965. The last three of these further supported the Apollo program by also carrying Pegasus satellites, which verified the safety of the translunar environment by measuring the frequency and severity of micrometeorite impacts.[59] In September 1962, NASA planned to launch four crewed CSM flights on the Saturn I from late 1965 through 1966, concurrent with Project Gemini. The 22,500-pound (10,200 kg) payload capacity[60] would have severely limited the systems which could be included, so the decision was made in October 1963 to use the uprated Saturn IB for all crewed Earth orbital flights.[61] Saturn IB[edit] Main article: Saturn IB The Saturn IB was an upgraded version of the Saturn I. The S-IB first stage increased the thrust to 1,600,000 pounds-force (7,120 kN) by uprating the H-1 engine. The second stage replaced the S-IV with the S-IVB-200, powered by a single J-2 engine burning liquid hydrogen fuel with LOX, to produce 200,000 pounds-force (890 kN) of thrust.[62] A restartable version of the S-IVB was used as the third stage of the Saturn V. The Saturn IB could send over 40,000 pounds (18,100 kg) into low Earth orbit, sufficient for a partially fueled CSM or the LM.[63] Saturn IB launch vehicles and flights were designated with an AS-200 series number, "AS" indicating "Apollo Saturn" and the "2" indicating the second member of the Saturn rocket family.[64] Saturn V[edit] Main article: Saturn V A Saturn V rocket launches Apollo 11, 1969 Saturn V launch vehicles and flights were designated with an AS-500 series number, "AS" indicating "Apollo Saturn" and the "5" indicating Saturn V.[64] The three-stage Saturn V was designed to send a fully fueled CSM and LM to the Moon. It was 33 feet (10.1 m) in diameter and stood 363 feet (110.6 m) tall with its 96,800-pound (43,900 kg) lunar payload. Its capability grew to 103,600 pounds (47,000 kg) for the later advanced lunar landings. The S-IC first stage burned RP-1/LOX for a rated thrust of 7,500,000 pounds-force (33,400 kN), which was upgraded to 7,610,000 pounds-force (33,900 kN). The second and third stages burned liquid hydrogen; the third stage was a modified version of the S-IVB, with thrust increased to 230,000 pounds-force (1,020 kN) and capability to restart the engine for translunar injection after reaching a parking orbit.[65] Astronauts[edit] Main article: List of Apollo astronauts Apollo 1 crew: Ed White, command pilot Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee NASA's director of flight crew operations during the Apollo program was Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who was medically grounded in September 1962 due to a heart murmur. Slayton was responsible for making all Gemini and Apollo crew assignments.[66] Thirty-two astronauts were assigned to fly missions in the Apollo program. Twenty-four of these left Earth's orbit and flew around the Moon between December 1968 and December 1972 (three of them twice). Half of the 24 walked on the Moon's surface, though none of them returned to it after landing once. One of the moonwalkers was a trained geologist. Of the 32, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed during a ground test in preparation for the Apollo 1 mission.[55] Apollo 11 crew, from left: Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin The Apollo astronauts were chosen from the Project Mercury and Gemini veterans, plus from two later astronaut groups. All missions were commanded by Gemini or Mercury veterans. Crews on all development flights (except the Earth orbit CSM development flights) through the first two landings on Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, included at least two (sometimes three) Gemini veterans. Dr. Harrison Schmitt, a geologist, was the first NASA scientist astronaut to fly in space, and landed on the Moon on the last mission, Apollo 17. Schmitt participated in the lunar geology training of all of the Apollo landing crews.[67] NASA awarded all 32 of these astronauts its highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal, given for "distinguished service, ability, or courage", and personal "contribution representing substantial progress to the NASA mission". The medals were awarded posthumously to Grissom, White, and Chaffee in 1969, then to the crews of all missions from Apollo 8 onward. The crew that flew the first Earth orbital test mission Apollo 7, Walter M. Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham, were awarded the lesser NASA Exceptional Service Medal, because of discipline problems with the flight director's orders during their flight. In October 2008, the NASA Administrator decided to award them the Distinguished Service Medals. For Schirra and Eisele, this was posthumously.[68] Lunar mission profile[edit] The first lunar landing mission was planned to proceed as follows:[69] Launch The three Saturn V stages burn for about 11 minutes to achieve a 100-nautical-mile (190 km) circular parking orbit. The third stage burns a small portion of its fuel to achieve orbit.   Translunar injection After one to two orbits to verify readiness of spacecraft systems, the S-IVB third stage reignites for about six minutes to send the spacecraft to the Moon.   Transposition and docking The Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter (SLA) panels separate to free the CSM and expose the LM. The command module pilot (CMP) moves the CSM out a safe distance, and turns 180°.   Extraction The CMP docks the CSM with the LM, and pulls the complete spacecraft away from the S-IVB. The lunar voyage takes between two and three days. Midcourse corrections are made as necessary using the SM engine.   Lunar orbit insertion The spacecraft passes about 60 nautical miles (110 km) behind the Moon, and the SM engine is fired to slow the spacecraft and put it into a 60-by-170-nautical-mile (110 by 310 km) orbit, which is soon circularized at 60 nautical miles by a second burn.   After a rest period, the commander (CDR) and lunar module pilot (LMP) move to the LM, power up its systems, and deploy the landing gear. The CSM and LM separate; the CMP visually inspects the LM, then the LM crew move a safe distance away and fire the descent engine for Descent orbit insertion, which takes it to a perilune of about 50,000 feet (15 km).   Powered descent At perilune, the descent engine fires again to start the descent. The CDR takes control after pitchover for a vertical landing.   The CDR and LMP perform one or more EVAs exploring the lunar surface and collecting samples, alternating with rest periods.   The ascent stage lifts off, using the descent stage as a launching pad.   The LM rendezvouses and docks with the CSM.   The CDR and LMP transfer back to the CM with their material samples, then the LM ascent stage is jettisoned, to eventually fall out of orbit and crash on the surface.   Trans-Earth injection The SM engine fires to send the CSM back to Earth.   The SM is jettisoned just before reentry, and the CM turns 180° to face its blunt end forward for reentry.   Atmospheric drag slows the CM. Aerodynamic heating surrounds it with an envelope of ionized air which causes a communications blackout for several minutes.   Parachutes are deployed, slowing the CM for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The astronauts are recovered and brought to an aircraft carrier. Lunar flight profile (distances not to scale). Profile variations[edit] Neil Armstrong pilots the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle and lands himself and navigator Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, July 20, 1969 The first three lunar missions (Apollo 8, Apollo 10, and Apollo 11) used a free return trajectory, keeping a flight path coplanar with the lunar orbit, which would allow a return to Earth in case the SM engine failed to make lunar orbit insertion. Landing site lighting conditions on later missions dictated a lunar orbital plane change, which required a course change maneuver soon after TLI, and eliminated the free-return option.[70] After Apollo 12 placed the second of several seismometers on the Moon,[71] the jettisoned LM ascent stages on Apollo 12 and later missions were deliberately crashed on the Moon at known locations to induce vibrations in the Moon's structure. The only exceptions to this were the Apollo 13 LM which burned up in the Earth's atmosphere, and Apollo 16, where a loss of attitude control after jettison prevented making a targeted impact.[72] As another active seismic experiment, the S-IVBs on Apollo 13 and subsequent missions were deliberately crashed on the Moon instead of being sent to solar orbit.[73] Starting with Apollo 13, descent orbit insertion was to be performed using the service module engine instead of the LM engine, in order to allow a greater fuel reserve for landing. This was actually done for the first time on Apollo 14, since the Apollo 13 mission was aborted before landing.[74] Development history[edit] Uncrewed flight tests[edit] Apollo uncrewed development mission launches. Click on a launch image to read the main article about each mission For a more comprehensive list, see List of Apollo missions. Two Block I CSMs were launched from LC-34 on suborbital flights in 1966 with the Saturn IB. The first, AS-201 launched on February 26, reached an altitude of 265.7 nautical miles (492.1 km) and splashed down 4,577 nautical miles (8,477 km) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.[75] The second, AS-202 on August 25, reached 617.1 nautical miles (1,142.9 km) altitude and was recovered 13,900 nautical miles (25,700 km) downrange in the Pacific Ocean. These flights validated the service module engine and the command module heat shield.[76] A third Saturn IB test, AS-203 launched from pad 37, went into orbit to support design of the S-IVB upper stage restart capability needed for the Saturn V. It carried a nose cone instead of the Apollo spacecraft, and its payload was the unburned liquid hydrogen fuel, the behavior of which engineers measured with temperature and pressure sensors, and a TV camera. This flight occurred on July 5, before AS-202, which was delayed because of problems getting the Apollo spacecraft ready for flight.[77] Preparation for crewed flight[edit] Two crewed orbital Block I CSM missions were planned: AS-204 and AS-205. The Block I crew positions were titled Command Pilot, Senior Pilot, and Pilot. The Senior Pilot would assume navigation duties, while the Pilot would function as a systems engineer.[78] The astronauts would wear a modified version of the Gemini spacesuit.[79] After an uncrewed LM test flight AS-206, a crew would fly the first Block II CSM and LM in a dual mission known as AS-207/208, or AS-278 (each spacecraft would be launched on a separate Saturn IB).[80] The Block II crew positions were titled Commander, Command Module Pilot, and Lunar Module Pilot. The astronauts would begin wearing a new Apollo A6L spacesuit, designed to accommodate lunar extravehicular activity (EVA). The traditional visor helmet was replaced with a clear "fishbowl" type for greater visibility, and the lunar surface EVA suit would include a water-cooled undergarment.[81] Deke Slayton, the grounded Mercury astronaut who became director of flight crew operations for the Gemini and Apollo programs, selected the first Apollo crew in January 1966, with Grissom as Command Pilot, White as Senior Pilot, and rookie Donn F. Eisele as Pilot. But Eisele dislocated his shoulder twice aboard the KC135 weightlessness training aircraft, and had to undergo surgery on January 27. Slayton replaced him with Chaffee.[82] NASA announced the final crew selection for AS-204 on March 21, 1966, with the backup crew consisting of Gemini veterans James McDivitt and David Scott, with rookie Russell L. "Rusty" Schweickart. Mercury/Gemini veteran Wally Schirra, Eisele, and rookie Walter Cunningham were announced on September 29 as the prime crew for AS-205.[82] In December 1966, the AS-205 mission was canceled, since the validation of the CSM would be accomplished on the 14-day first flight, and AS-205 would have been devoted to space experiments and contribute no new engineering knowledge about the spacecraft. Its Saturn IB was allocated to the dual mission, now redesignated AS-205/208 or AS-258, planned for August 1967. McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart were promoted to the prime AS-258 crew, and Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham were reassigned as the Apollo 1 backup crew.[83] Program delays[edit] The spacecraft for the AS-202 and AS-204 missions were delivered by North American Aviation to the Kennedy Space Center with long lists of equipment problems which had to be corrected before flight; these delays caused the launch of AS-202 to slip behind AS-203, and eliminated hopes the first crewed mission might be ready to launch as soon as November 1966, concurrently with the last Gemini mission. Eventually, the planned AS-204 flight date was pushed to February 21, 1967.[84] North American Aviation was prime contractor not only for the Apollo CSM, but for the Saturn V S-II second stage as well, and delays in this stage pushed the first uncrewed Saturn V flight AS-501 from late 1966 to November 1967. (The initial assembly of AS-501 had to use a dummy spacer spool in place of the stage.)[85] The problems with North American were severe enough in late 1965 to cause Manned Space Flight Administrator George Mueller to appoint program director Samuel Phillips to head a "tiger team" to investigate North American's problems and identify corrections. Phillips documented his findings in a December 19 letter to NAA president Lee Atwood, with a strongly worded letter by Mueller, and also gave a presentation of the results to Mueller and Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans.[86] Meanwhile, Grumman was also encountering problems with the Lunar Module, eliminating hopes it would be ready for crewed flight in 1967, not long after the first crewed CSM flights.[87] Apollo 1 fire[edit] Charred Apollo 1 cabin interior Main article: Apollo 1 Grissom, White, and Chaffee decided to name their flight Apollo 1 as a motivational focus on the first crewed flight. They trained and conducted tests of their spacecraft at North American, and in the altitude chamber at the Kennedy Space Center. A "plugs-out" test was planned for January, which would simulate a launch countdown on LC-34 with the spacecraft transferring from pad-supplied to internal power. If successful, this would be followed by a more rigorous countdown simulation test closer to the February 21 launch, with both spacecraft and launch vehicle fueled.[88] The plugs-out test began on the morning of January 27, 1967, and immediately was plagued with problems. First, the crew noticed a strange odor in their spacesuits which delayed the sealing of the hatch. Then, communications problems frustrated the astronauts and forced a hold in the simulated countdown. During this hold, an electrical fire began in the cabin and spread quickly in the high pressure, 100% oxygen atmosphere. Pressure rose high enough from the fire that the cabin inner wall burst, allowing the fire to erupt onto the pad area and frustrating attempts to rescue the crew. The astronauts were asphyxiated before the hatch could be opened.[89] Block II spacesuit in January 1968, before (left) and after changes recommended after the Apollo 1 fire NASA immediately convened an accident review board, overseen by both houses of Congress. While the determination of responsibility for the accident was complex, the review board concluded that "deficiencies existed in command module design, workmanship and quality control".[89] At the insistence of NASA Administrator Webb, North American removed Harrison Storms as command module program manager.[90] Webb also reassigned Apollo Spacecraft Program Office (ASPO) Manager Joseph Francis Shea, replacing him with George Low.[91] To remedy the causes of the fire, changes were made in the Block II spacecraft and operational procedures, the most important of which were use of a nitrogen/oxygen mixture instead of pure oxygen before and during launch, and removal of flammable cabin and space suit materials.[92] The Block II design already called for replacement of the Block I plug-type hatch cover with a quick-release, outward opening door.[92] NASA discontinued the crewed Block I program, using the Block I spacecraft only for uncrewed Saturn V flights. Crew members would also exclusively wear modified, fire-resistant A7L Block II space suits, and would be designated by the Block II titles, regardless of whether a LM was present on the flight or not.[81] Uncrewed Saturn V and LM tests[edit] On April 24, 1967, Mueller published an official Apollo mission numbering scheme, using sequential numbers for all flights, crewed or uncrewed. The sequence would start with Apollo 4 to cover the first three uncrewed flights while retiring the Apollo 1 designation to honor the crew, per their widows' wishes.[55][93] In September 1967, Mueller approved a sequence of mission types which had to be successfully accomplished in order to achieve the crewed lunar landing. Each step had to be successfully accomplished before the next ones could be performed, and it was unknown how many tries of each mission would be necessary; therefore letters were used instead of numbers. The A missions were uncrewed Saturn V validation; B was uncrewed LM validation using the Saturn IB; C was crewed CSM Earth orbit validation using the Saturn IB; D was the first crewed CSM/LM flight (this replaced AS-258, using a single Saturn V launch); E would be a higher Earth orbit CSM/LM flight; F would be the first lunar mission, testing the LM in lunar orbit but without landing (a "dress rehearsal"); and G would be the first crewed landing. The list of types covered follow-on lunar exploration to include H lunar landings, I for lunar orbital survey missions, and J for extended-stay lunar landings.[94] The delay in the CSM caused by the fire enabled NASA to catch up on human-rating the LM and Saturn V. Apollo 4 (AS-501) was the first uncrewed flight of the Saturn V, carrying a Block I CSM on November 9, 1967. The capability of the command module's heat shield to survive a trans-lunar reentry was demonstrated by using the service module engine to ram it into the atmosphere at higher than the usual Earth-orbital reentry speed. Apollo 5 (AS-204) was the first uncrewed test flight of the LM in Earth orbit, launched from pad 37 on January 22, 1968, by the Saturn IB that would have been used for Apollo 1. The LM engines were successfully test-fired and restarted, despite a computer programming error which cut short the first descent stage firing. The ascent engine was fired in abort mode, known as a "fire-in-the-hole" test, where it was lit simultaneously with jettison of the descent stage. Although Grumman wanted a second uncrewed test, George Low decided the next LM flight would be crewed.[95] This was followed on April 4, 1968, by Apollo 6 (AS-502) which carried a CSM and a LM Test Article as ballast. The intent of this mission was to achieve trans-lunar injection, followed closely by a simulated direct-return abort, using the service module engine to achieve another high-speed reentry. The Saturn V experienced pogo oscillation, a problem caused by non-steady engine combustion, which damaged fuel lines in the second and third stages. Two S-II engines shut down prematurely, but the remaining engines were able to compensate. The damage to the third stage engine was more severe, preventing it from restarting for trans-lunar injection. Mission controllers were able to use the service module engine to essentially repeat the flight profile of Apollo 4. Based on the good performance of Apollo 6 and identification of satisfactory fixes to the Apollo 6 problems, NASA declared the Saturn V ready to fly crew, canceling a third uncrewed test.[96] Crewed development missions[edit] Apollo crewed development mission patches. Click on a patch to read the main article about that mission Apollo 7, launched from LC-34 on October 11, 1968, was the C mission, crewed by Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham. It was an 11-day Earth-orbital flight which tested the CSM systems.[97] Apollo 8 was planned to be the D mission in December 1968, crewed by McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart, launched on a Saturn V instead of two Saturn IBs.[98] In the summer it had become clear that the LM would not be ready in time. Rather than waste the Saturn V on another simple Earth-orbiting mission, ASPO Manager George Low suggested the bold step of sending Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon instead, deferring the D mission to the next mission in March 1969, and eliminating the E mission. This would keep the program on track. The Soviet Union had sent two tortoises, mealworms, wine flies, and other lifeforms around the Moon on September 15, 1968, aboard Zond 5, and it was believed they might soon repeat the feat with human cosmonauts.[99][100] The decision was not announced publicly until successful completion of Apollo 7. Gemini veterans Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, and rookie William Anders captured the world's attention by making ten lunar orbits in 20 hours, transmitting television pictures of the lunar surface on Christmas Eve, and returning safely to Earth.[101] Neil Armstrong descends the LM's ladder in preparation for the first steps on the lunar surface, as televised live on July 20, 1969 The following March, LM flight, rendezvous and docking were successfully demonstrated in Earth orbit on Apollo 9, and Schweickart tested the full lunar EVA suit with its portable life support system (PLSS) outside the LM.[102] The F mission was successfully carried out on Apollo 10 in May 1969 by Gemini veterans Thomas P. Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan. Stafford and Cernan took the LM to within 50,000 feet (15 km) of the lunar surface.[103] The G mission was achieved on Apollo 11 in July 1969 by an all-Gemini veteran crew consisting of Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong and Aldrin performed the first landing at the Sea of Tranquility at 20:17:40 UTC on July 20, 1969. They spent a total of 21 hours, 36 minutes on the surface, and spent 2 hours, 31 minutes outside the spacecraft,[104] walking on the surface, taking photographs, collecting material samples, and deploying automated scientific instruments, while continuously sending black-and-white television back to Earth. The astronauts returned safely on July 24.[105] That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. — Neil Armstrong, just after stepping onto the Moon's surface[106] Production lunar landings[edit] In November 1969, Charles “Pete” Conrad became the third person to step onto the Moon, which he did while speaking more informally than had Armstrong: Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. — Pete Conrad[107] Apollo production crewed lunar landing mission patches. Click on a patch to read the main article about that mission Conrad and rookie Alan L. Bean made a precision landing of Apollo 12 within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 uncrewed lunar probe, which had landed in April 1967 on the Ocean of Storms. The command module pilot was Gemini veteran Richard F. Gordon Jr. Conrad and Bean carried the first lunar surface color television camera, but it was damaged when accidentally pointed into the Sun. They made two EVAs totaling 7 hours and 45 minutes.[104] On one, they walked to the Surveyor, photographed it, and removed some parts which they returned to Earth.[108] The contracted batch of 15 Saturn Vs was enough for lunar landing missions through Apollo 20. Shortly after Apollo 11, NASA publicized a preliminary list of eight more planned landing sites after Apollo 12, with plans to increase the mass of the CSM and LM for the last five missions, along with the payload capacity of the Saturn V. These final missions would combine the I and J types in the 1967 list, allowing the CMP to operate a package of lunar orbital sensors and cameras while his companions were on the surface, and allowing them to stay on the Moon for over three days. These missions would also carry the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) increasing the exploration area and allowing televised liftoff of the LM. Also, the Block II spacesuit was revised for the extended missions to allow greater flexibility and visibility for driving the LRV.[109] Apollo landings on the Moon, 1969–1972 The success of the first two landings allowed the remaining missions to be crewed with a single veteran as commander, with two rookies. Apollo 13 launched Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in April 1970, headed for the Fra Mauro formation. But two days out, a liquid oxygen tank exploded, disabling the service module and forcing the crew to use the LM as a "lifeboat" to return to Earth. Another NASA review board was convened to determine the cause, which turned out to be a combination of damage of the tank in the factory, and a subcontractor not making a tank component according to updated design specifications.[48] Apollo was grounded again, for the remainder of 1970 while the oxygen tank was redesigned and an extra one was added.[110] Mission cutbacks[edit] About the time of the first landing in 1969, it was decided to use an existing Saturn V to launch the Skylab orbital laboratory pre-built on the ground, replacing the original plan to construct it in orbit from several Saturn IB launches; this eliminated Apollo 20. NASA's yearly budget also began to shrink in light of the successful landing, and NASA also had to make funds available for the development of the upcoming Space Shuttle. By 1971, the decision was made to also cancel missions 18 and 19.[111] The two unused Saturn Vs became museum exhibits at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, George C. Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.[112] The cutbacks forced mission planners to reassess the original planned landing sites in order to achieve the most effective geological sample and data collection from the remaining four missions. Apollo 15 had been planned to be the last of the H series missions, but since there would be only two subsequent missions left, it was changed to the first of three J missions.[113] Apollo 13's Fra Mauro mission was reassigned to Apollo 14, commanded in February 1971 by Mercury veteran Alan Shepard, with Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell.[114] This time the mission was successful. Shepard and Mitchell spent 33 hours and 31 minutes on the surface,[115] and completed two EVAs totalling 9 hours 24 minutes, which was a record for the longest EVA by a lunar crew at the time.[114] In August 1971, just after conclusion of the Apollo 15 mission, President Richard Nixon proposed canceling the two remaining lunar landing missions, Apollo 16 and 17. Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Caspar Weinberger was opposed to this, and persuaded Nixon to keep the remaining missions.[116] Extended missions[edit] Lunar Roving Vehicle used on Apollos 15–17 Apollo 15 was launched on July 26, 1971, with David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin. Scott and Irwin landed on July 30 near Hadley Rille, and spent just under two days, 19 hours on the surface. In over 18 hours of EVA, they collected about 77 kilograms (170 lb) of lunar material.[117] Plaque left on the Moon by Apollo 17 Apollo 16 landed in the Descartes Highlands on April 20, 1972. The crew was commanded by John Young, with Ken Mattingly and Charles Duke. Young and Duke spent just under three days on the surface, with a total of over 20 hours EVA.[118] Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo program, landing in the Taurus–Littrow region in December 1972. Eugene Cernan commanded Ronald E. Evans and NASA's first scientist-astronaut, geologist Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt.[119] Schmitt was originally scheduled for Apollo 18,[120] but the lunar geological community lobbied for his inclusion on the final lunar landing.[121] Cernan and Schmitt stayed on the surface for just over three days and spent just over 23 hours of total EVA.[119] Canceled missions[edit] Main article: Canceled Apollo missions Several missions were planned for but were canceled before details were finalized. Mission summary[edit] For a more comprehensive list, see List of Apollo missions. Designation Date Launch vehicle CSM LM Crew Summary AS-201 Feb 26, 1966 AS-201 CSM-009 None None First flight of Saturn IB and Block I CSM; suborbital to Atlantic Ocean; qualified heat shield to orbital reentry speed. AS-203 Jul 5, 1966 AS-203 None None None No spacecraft; observations of liquid hydrogen fuel behavior in orbit, to support design of S-IVB restart capability. AS-202 Aug 25, 1966 AS-202 CSM-011 None None Suborbital flight of CSM to Pacific Ocean. AS-204 (Apollo 1) Feb 21, 1967 AS-204 CSM-012 None Gus Grissom Ed White Roger B. Chaffee Not flown. All crew members died in a fire during a launch pad test on January 27, 1967. Apollo 4 Nov 9, 1967 AS-501 CSM-017 LTA-10R None First test flight of Saturn V, placed a CSM in a high Earth orbit; demonstrated S-IVB restart; qualified CM heat shield to lunar reentry speed. Apollo 5 Jan 22–23, 1968 AS-204 None LM-1 None Earth orbital flight test of LM, launched on Saturn IB; demonstrated ascent and descent propulsion; human-rated the LM. Apollo 6 Apr 4, 1968 AS-502 CM-020 SM-014 LTA-2R None Uncrewed, second flight of Saturn V, attempted demonstration of trans-lunar injection, and direct-return abort using SM engine; three engine failures, including failure of S-IVB restart. Flight controllers used SM engine to repeat Apollo 4's flight profile. Human-rated the Saturn V. Apollo 7 Oct 11–22, 1968 AS-205 CSM-101 None Wally Schirra Walt Cunningham Donn Eisele First crewed Earth orbital demonstration of Block II CSM, launched on Saturn IB. First live television publicly broadcast from a crewed mission. Apollo 8 Dec 21–27, 1968 AS-503 CSM-103 LTA-B Frank Borman James Lovell William Anders First crewed flight of Saturn V; First crewed flight to Moon; CSM made 10 lunar orbits in 20 hours. Apollo 9 Mar 3–13, 1969 AS-504 CSM-104 Gumdrop LM-3 Spider James McDivitt David Scott Russell Schweickart Second crewed flight of Saturn V; First crewed flight of CSM and LM in Earth orbit; demonstrated portable life support system to be used on the lunar surface. Apollo 10 May 18–26, 1969 AS-505 CSM-106 Charlie Brown LM-4 Snoopy Thomas Stafford John Young Eugene Cernan Dress rehearsal for first lunar landing; flew LM down to 50,000 feet (15 km) from lunar surface. Apollo 11 Jul 16–24, 1969 AS-506 CSM-107 Columbia LM-5 Eagle Neil Armstrong Michael Collins Buzz Aldrin First crewed landing, in Tranquility Base, Sea of Tranquility. Surface EVA time: 2:31 hr. Samples returned: 47.51 pounds (21.55 kg). Apollo 12 Nov 14–24, 1969 AS-507 CSM-108 Yankee Clipper LM-6 Intrepid C. "Pete" Conrad Richard Gordon Alan Bean Second landing, in Ocean of Storms near Surveyor 3. Surface EVA time: 7:45 hr. Samples returned: 75.62 pounds (34.30 kg). Apollo 13 Apr 11–17, 1970 AS-508 CSM-109 Odyssey LM-7 Aquarius James Lovell Jack Swigert Fred Haise Third landing attempt aborted in transit to the Moon, due to SM failure. Crew used LM as "lifeboat" to return to Earth. Mission labelled as a "successful failure".[122] Apollo 14 Jan 31 – Feb 9, 1971 AS-509 CSM-110 Kitty Hawk LM-8 Antares Alan Shepard Stuart Roosa Edgar Mitchell Third landing, in Fra Mauro formation, located northeast of the Ocean of Storms. Surface EVA time: 9:21 hr. Samples returned: 94.35 pounds (42.80 kg). Apollo 15 Jul 26 – Aug 7, 1971 AS-510 CSM-112 Endeavour LM-10 Falcon David Scott Alfred Worden James Irwin First Extended LM and rover, landed in Hadley-Apennine, located near the Sea of Showers/Rains. Surface EVA time: 18:33 hr. Samples returned: 169.10 pounds (76.70 kg). Apollo 16 Apr 16–27, 1972 AS-511 CSM-113 Casper LM-11 Orion John Young T. Kenneth Mattingly Charles Duke Landed in Plain of Descartes. Rover on Moon. Surface EVA time: 20:14 hr. Samples returned: 207.89 pounds (94.30 kg). Apollo 17 Dec 7–19, 1972 AS-512 CSM-114 America LM-12 Challenger Eugene Cernan Ronald Evans Harrison Schmitt Only Saturn V night launch. Landed in Taurus–Littrow. Rover on Moon. First geologist on the Moon. Apollo's last crewed Moon landing. Surface EVA time: 22:02 hr. Samples returned: 243.40 pounds (110.40 kg). Source: Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference (Orloff 2004)[123] Samples returned[edit] Main article: Moon rock The most famous of the Moon rocks recovered, the Genesis Rock, returned from Apollo 15. Ferroan Anorthosite Moon rock, returned from Apollo 16. The Apollo program returned over 382 kg (842 lb) of lunar rocks and soil to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston.[124][123][125] Today, 75% of the samples are stored at the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility built in 1979.[126] The rocks collected from the Moon are extremely old compared to rocks found on Earth, as measured by radiometric dating techniques. They range in age from about 3.2 billion years for the basaltic samples derived from the lunar maria, to about 4.6 billion years for samples derived from the highlands crust.[127] As such, they represent samples from a very early period in the development of the Solar System, that are largely absent on Earth. One important rock found during the Apollo Program is dubbed the Genesis Rock, retrieved by astronauts David Scott and James Irwin during the Apollo 15 mission.[128] This anorthosite rock is composed almost exclusively of the calcium-rich feldspar mineral anorthite, and is believed to be representative of the highland crust.[129] A geochemical component called KREEP was discovered by Apollo 12, which has no known terrestrial counterpart.[130] KREEP and the anorthositic samples have been used to infer that the outer portion of the Moon was once completely molten (see lunar magma ocean).[131] Almost all the rocks show evidence of impact process effects. Many samples appear to be pitted with micrometeoroid impact craters, which is never seen on Earth rocks, due to the thick atmosphere. Many show signs of being subjected to high-pressure shock waves that are generated during impact events. Some of the returned samples are of impact melt (materials melted near an impact crater.) All samples returned from the Moon are highly brecciated as a result of being subjected to multiple impact events.[132] Analysis of the composition of the lunar samples supports the giant impact hypothesis, that the Moon was created through impact of a large astronomical body with the Earth.[133] Costs[edit] Apollo cost $25.4 billion (or approximately $158 billion in 2020 dollars when adjusted for inflation via the GDP deflator index).[1] Of this amount, $20.2 billion ($126 billion adjusted) was spent on the design, development, and production of the Saturn family of launch vehicles, the Apollo spacecraft, spacesuits, scientific experiments, and mission operations. The cost of constructing and operating Apollo-related ground facilities, such as the NASA human spaceflight centers and the global tracking and data acquisition network, added an additional $5.2 billion ($32.3 billion adjusted). The amount grows to $28 billion ($174 billion adjusted) if the costs for related projects such as Project Gemini and the robotic Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter programs are included.[134] NASA's official cost breakdown, as reported to Congress in the Spring of 1973, is as follows: Project Apollo Cost (original $) Apollo spacecraft 8.5 billion Saturn launch vehicles 9.1 billion Launch vehicle engine development 900 million Operations 1.7 billion Total R&D 20.2 billion Tracking and data acquisition 900 million Ground facilities 1.8 billion Operation of installations 2.5 billion Total 25.4 billion Accurate estimates of human spaceflight costs were difficult in the early 1960s, as the capability was new and management experience was lacking. Preliminary cost analysis by NASA estimated $7 billion – $12 billion for a crewed lunar landing effort. NASA Administrator James Webb increased this estimate to $20 billion before reporting it to Vice President Johnson in April 1961.[135] Project Apollo was a massive undertaking, representing the largest research and development project in peacetime. At its peak, it employed over 400,000 employees and contractors around the country and accounted for more than half of NASA's total spending in the 1960s.[136] After the first Moon landing, public and political interest waned, including that of President Nixon, who wanted to rein in federal spending.[137] NASA's budget could not sustain Apollo missions which cost, on average, $445 million ($2.31 billion adjusted)[138] each while simultaneously developing the Space Shuttle. The final fiscal year of Apollo funding was 1973. Apollo Applications Program[edit] Main article: Apollo Applications Program Looking beyond the crewed lunar landings, NASA investigated several post-lunar applications for Apollo hardware. The Apollo Extension Series (Apollo X) proposed up to 30 flights to Earth orbit, using the space in the Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter (SLA) to house a small orbital laboratory (workshop). Astronauts would continue to use the CSM as a ferry to the station. This study was followed by design of a larger orbital workshop to be built in orbit from an empty S-IVB Saturn upper stage and grew into the Apollo Applications Program (AAP). The workshop was to be supplemented by the Apollo Telescope Mount, which could be attached to the ascent stage of the lunar module via a rack.[139] The most ambitious plan called for using an empty S-IVB as an interplanetary spacecraft for a Venus fly-by mission.[140] The S-IVB orbital workshop was the only one of these plans to make it off the drawing board. Dubbed Skylab, it was assembled on the ground rather than in space, and launched in 1973 using the two lower stages of a Saturn V. It was equipped with an Apollo Telescope Mount. Skylab's last crew departed the station on February 8, 1974, and the station itself re-entered the atmosphere in 1979.[141][142] The Apollo–Soyuz program also used Apollo hardware for the first joint nation spaceflight, paving the way for future cooperation with other nations in the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs.[142][143] Recent observations[edit] Tranquility Base, imaged in March 2012 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter In 2008, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's SELENE probe observed evidence of the halo surrounding the Apollo 15 Lunar Module blast crater while orbiting above the lunar surface.[144] Beginning in 2009, NASA's robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, while orbiting 50 kilometers (31 mi) above the Moon, photographed the remnants of the Apollo program left on the lunar surface, and each site where crewed Apollo flights landed.[145][146] All of the U.S. flags left on the Moon during the Apollo missions were found to still be standing, with the exception of the one left during the Apollo 11 mission, which was blown over during that mission's lift-off from the lunar surface and return to the mission Command Module in lunar orbit; the degree to which these flags retain their original colors remains unknown.[147] In a November 16, 2009, editorial, The New York Times opined: [T]here's something terribly wistful about these photographs of the Apollo landing sites. The detail is such that if Neil Armstrong were walking there now, we could make him out, make out his footsteps even, like the astronaut footpath clearly visible in the photos of the Apollo 14 site. Perhaps the wistfulness is caused by the sense of simple grandeur in those Apollo missions. Perhaps, too, it's a reminder of the risk we all felt after the Eagle had landed—the possibility that it might be unable to lift off again and the astronauts would be stranded on the Moon. But it may also be that a photograph like this one is as close as we're able to come to looking directly back into the human past ... There the [Apollo 11] lunar module sits, parked just where it landed 40 years ago, as if it still really were 40 years ago and all the time since merely imaginary.[148] Legacy[edit] Science and engineering[edit] Further information: NASA spin-off technologies The Apollo program has been called the greatest technological achievement in human history.[149] Apollo stimulated many areas of technology, leading to over 1,800 spinoff products as of 2015.[150] The flight computer design used in both the lunar and command modules was, along with the Polaris and Minuteman missile systems, the driving force behind early research into integrated circuits (ICs). By 1963, Apollo was using 60 percent of the United States' production of ICs. The crucial difference between the requirements of Apollo and the missile programs was Apollo's much greater need for reliability. While the Navy and Air Force could work around reliability problems by deploying more missiles, the political and financial cost of failure of an Apollo mission was unacceptably high.[151] Technologies and techniques required for Apollo were developed by Project Gemini.[152] The Apollo project was enabled by NASA's adoption of new advances in semiconductor electronic technology, including metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP)[153][154] and silicon integrated circuit chips in the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).[155] Cultural impact[edit] The Blue Marble photograph taken on December 7, 1972, during Apollo 17. "We went to explore the Moon, and in fact discovered the Earth." —Eugene Cernan The crew of Apollo 8 sent the first live televised pictures of the Earth and the Moon back to Earth, and read from the creation story in the Book of Genesis, on Christmas Eve 1968.[156] An estimated one-quarter of the population of the world saw—either live or delayed—the Christmas Eve transmission during the ninth orbit of the Moon,[157] and an estimated one-fifth of the population of the world watched the live transmission of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.[158] The Apollo program also affected environmental activism in the 1970s due to photos taken by the astronauts. The most well known include Earthrise, taken by William Anders on Apollo 8, and The Blue Marble, taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts. The Blue Marble was released during a surge in environmentalism, and became a symbol of the environmental movement as a depiction of Earth's frailty, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space.[159] According to The Economist, Apollo succeeded in accomplishing President Kennedy's goal of taking on the Soviet Union in the Space Race by accomplishing a singular and significant achievement, to demonstrate the superiority of the free-market system. The publication noted the irony that in order to achieve the goal, the program required the organization of tremendous public resources within a vast, centralized government bureaucracy.[160] Apollo 11 broadcast data restoration project[edit] Main article: Apollo 11 missing tapes Prior to Apollo 11's 40th anniversary in 2009, NASA searched for the original videotapes of the mission's live televised moonwalk. After an exhaustive three-year search, it was concluded that the tapes had probably been erased and reused. A new digitally remastered version of the best available broadcast television footage was released instead.[161] NASA spinoffs from Apollo[edit] NASA spinoffs are dual-purpose technologies created by NASA that have come to help day-to-day life on Earth. Many of these discoveries were made to deal with problems in space. Spinoffs have come out of every NASA mission as well as other discoveries outside of space missions. The following are NASA spinoffs that have come from discoveries from and for the Apollo mission. Cordless power tools[edit] NASA started using cordless tools to build the International Space Station in orbit. Today these innovations have led to cordless battery-powered tools used on Earth. Cordless tools have been able to help surgeons in operating rooms greatly because they allow for a greater range of freedom.[162] Fireproof material[edit] Following the 1967 Apollo fire, NASA learned that they needed fireproof material to protect astronauts inside the spaceship. NASA developed fireproof material for use on parts of the capsule and on spacesuits. This is important because there is a high percentage of oxygen under great pressure, presenting a fire hazard. The fireproof fabric, called Durette, was created by Monsanto and is now used in firefighting gear.[162] Heart monitors[edit] Technology discovered and employed in the Apollo missions led to technology that Medrad used to create an AID implantable automatic pulse generator.[163] This technology is able to monitor heart attacks and can help correct heart malfunctions using small electrical shocks. With heart disease being so common in the United States, heart monitoring is a very important technological advance.[162] Solar panels[edit] Solar panels are able to absorb light to create electricity. This technology used discoveries from NASA's Apollo Lunar Module program. Light collected from the panels is transformed into electricity through a semiconductor. Solar panels are now employed in many common applications including outdoor lighting, houses, street lights and portable chargers. In addition to being used on Earth, this technology is still being used in space on the International Space Station.[162] Digital imaging[edit] NASA has been able to contribute to creating technology for CAT scans, radiography and MRIs.[163] This technology came from discoveries using digital imaging for NASA's lunar research. CAT scans, radiography and MRIs have made a huge impact in the world of medicine, allowing doctors to see in more detail what is happening inside patients’ bodies.[162] Liquid methane[edit] Liquid methane is a fuel which the Apollo program created as a less expensive alternative to traditional oil. It is still used today in rocket launches. Methane must be stored at extremely low temperature to remain liquid, requiring a temperature of −260 °F (−162 °C). Liquid methane was created by Beech Aircraft Corporation's Boulder Division, and since then the company has been able to convert some cars to run on liquid methane.[162] Depictions on film[edit] Documentaries[edit] Numerous documentary films cover the Apollo program and the Space Race, including: Footprints on the Moon (1969) Moonwalk One (1970)[164] For All Mankind (1989)[165] Moon Shot (1994 miniseries) "Moon" from the BBC miniseries The Planets (1999) Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D (2005) The Wonder of It All (2007) In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)[166] When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (2008 miniseries) Moon Machines (2008 miniseries) James May on the Moon (2009) NASA's Story (2009 miniseries) Apollo 11 (2019)[167][168] Chasing the Moon (2019 miniseries) Docudramas[edit] The Apollo program, or certain missions, have been dramatized in Apollo 13 (1995), Apollo 11 (1996), From the Earth to the Moon (1998), The Dish (2000), Space Race (2005), Moonshot (2009), and First Man (2018). Fictional[edit] The Apollo program has been the focus of several works of fiction, including: Apollo 18, a 2011 horror movie which was released to negative reviews. For All Mankind, a 2019 TV series depicting an alternate reality in which the Soviet Union was the first country to successfully land a man on the Moon. The rest of the series follows an alternate history of the late 1960s and early 1970s with NASA continuing Apollo missions to the Moon.   .   ebay5662/202
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