|
Dates |
19671972 |
Vehicles |
Saturn IB and Saturn
V launch vehicles
Apollo Command/Service Module
Lunar Module |
Number of People Flown |
33 |
Highlights |
First humans to leave Earth
orbit
First human landing on the Moon |
January 27, 1967
Crew: Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom, Edward H. White II,
Roger B. Chaffee
On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck the Apollo program,
nearly derailing the goal of landing an American on the Moon by the end
of the decade. A fire took place on the launch pad during a preflight
test for Apollo 1 (AS-204), which was scheduled to be the first
Apollo manned mission, and would have been launched on February 21, 1967.
Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee lost their
lives when a fire swept through the Command Module (CM). The exhaustive
investigation of the fire and extensive reworking of the CMs postponed
any manned launch until NASA officials cleared the CM for manned flight.
Saturn IB schedules were suspended for nearly a year, and the launch vehicle
that finally bore the designation AS-204 carried a Lunar Module (LM) as
the payload, not the Apollo CM. The missions of AS-201 and AS-202 with
Apollo spacecraft aboard had been unofficially known as Apollo 1 and Apollo
2 missions (AS-203 carried only the aerodynamic nose cone). In the spring
of 1967, NASA's Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, Dr. George
E. Mueller, announced that the mission originally scheduled for Grissom,
White, and Chaffee would be known as Apollo 1, and said that the first
Saturn V launch, scheduled for November 1967, would be known as Apollo
4. The eventual launch of AS-204 became known as the Apollo 5 mission
(no missions or flights were ever designated Apollo 2 and 3). The second
launch of a Saturn V took place on schedule in the early morning of April
4, 1968. Known as AS-502, or Apollo 6, the flight was a success, though
two first-stage engines shut down prematurely, and the third-stage engine
failed to re-ignite after reaching orbit.
October 11-22, 1968
Crew: Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donn F. Eisele, Walter
Cunningham
Apollo 7 was a confidence-builder. After the January
1967 Apollo launch pad fire, the Apollo Command Module had been extensively
redesigned. Schirra, the only astronaut to fly Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo
missions, commanded this Earth-orbital shakedown of the Command and Service
Modules. With no lunar lander, Apollo 7 was able to use the Saturn
IB booster rather than the giant Saturn V. The Apollo hardware and all
mission operations worked without any significant problems, and the Service
Propulsion System (SPS)—the all-important engine that would place Apollo
in and out of lunar orbit—made eight nearly perfect firings. Even though
Apollo’s larger cabin was more comfortable than Gemini’s, eleven days
in orbit took its toll on the astronauts. The food was bad, and all three
developed colds. But their mission proved the spaceworthiness of the basic
Apollo vehicle.
December 21-27, 1968
Crew: Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., William
A. Anders
The Apollo 8 astronauts were the first human beings
to venture beyond low-Earth orbit and visit another world. What was originally
to have been an Earth-orbit checkout of the lunar lander became instead
a race with the Soviets to become the first nation to orbit the Moon.
The Apollo 8 crew rode inside the Command Module, with no lunar
lander attached. They were the first astronauts to be launched by the
Saturn V, which had flown only twice before. The booster worked perfectly,
as did the SPS engines that had been checked out on Apollo 7. Apollo
8 entered lunar orbit on the morning of December 24, 1968. For the
next 20 hours, the astronauts circled the Moon, which appeared out their
windows as a gray, battered wasteland. They took photographs, scouted
future landing sites, and on Christmas Eve read from the Book of Genesis
to TV viewers back on Earth. They also photographed the first Earthrise
as seen from the Moon. Apollo 8 proved the ability to navigate
to and from the Moon, and gave a tremendous boost to the entire Apollo
program.
March 3-13, 1969
Crew: James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, Russell
L. Schweickart
Apollo 9 was the first space test of the third critical
piece of Apollo hardware—the lunar module. For ten days, the astronauts
put all three Apollo vehicles through their paces in Earth orbit, undocking
and then redocking the lunar lander with the Command Module, just as they
would in lunar orbit. For this and all subsequent Apollo flights, the
crews were allowed to name their own spacecraft. The gangly lunar module
was "Spider," the command module "Gumdrop." Schweickart
and Scott performed a spacewalk, and Schweickart checked out the new Apollo
spacesuit, the first to have its own life support system rather than being
dependent on an umbilical connection to the spacecraft. Apollo 9
gave proof that the Apollo machines were up to the task of orbital rendezvous
and docking.
May 18-26, 1969
Crew: Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, Eugene A.
Cernan
This dress rehearsal for a Moon landing brought Stafford
and Cernan’s Lunar Module (LM)nicknamed "Snoopy"to
within nine miles of the lunar surface. Except for that final stretch,
the mission went exactly as a landing would have, both in space and on
the ground, where Apollos extensive tracking and control network
was put through a dry run. Shortly after leaving low Earth orbit, the
LM and the Command/Service Module separated, then redocked, top to top.
Upon reaching lunar orbit, they separated again. While Young orbited the
Moon alone in his Command Module "Charlie Brown," Stafford and
Cernan checked out the LMs radar and ascent engine, rode out a momentary
gyration in the lunar lander’s motion (due to a faulty switch setting),
and surveyed the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility.
This test article of the LM was not equipped to land, however. Apollo
10 also added another firstbroadcasting live color TV from space.
July 16-24, 1969
Crew: Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E.
"Buzz" Aldrin, Jr.
Half of Apollos primary goal—a safe return—was achieved
at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on July 20, when Armstrong piloted
"Eagle" to a touchdown on the Moon, with less than 30 seconds
worth of fuel left in the Lunar Module. Six hours later, Armstrong took
his famous "one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin joined him,
and the two spent two-and-a-half hours drilling core samples, photographing
what they saw, and collecting rocks. After more than 21 hours on the lunar
surface, they returned to Collins on board "Columbia," bringing
20.87 kilograms of lunar samples with them. The two Moon-walkers had left
behind scientific instruments, an American flag, and other mementos, including
a plaque bearing the inscription: "Here Men From Planet Earth First
Set Foot Upon The Moon. July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind."
November 14-24, 1969
Crew: Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr., Richard
F. Gordon, Jr., Alan L. Bean
The second lunar landing was an exercise in precision targeting.
The descent was automatic, with only a few manual corrections by Conrad.
The landing, in the Ocean of Storms, brought the Lunar Module "Intrepid"
within walking distance182.88 metersof a robot spacecraft
that had touched down there two-and-a-half years earlier. Conrad and Bean
brought pieces of the Surveyor 3 back to Earth for analysis, and
took two Moon-walks lasting just under four hours each. They collected
rocks and set up experiments that measured the Moon’s seismicity, solar
wind flux, and magnetic field. Meanwhile Gordon, on board the "Yankee
Clipper" in lunar orbit, took multispectral photographs of the surface.
The crew stayed an extra day in lunar orbit taking photographs. When "Intrepid’s"
ascent stage was dropped onto the Moon after Conrad and Bean rejoined
Gordon in orbit, the seismometers the astronauts had left on the lunar
surface registered the vibrations for more than an hour.
April 11-17, 1970
Crew: James A. Lovell, Jr., Fred W. Haise, Jr., John
L. Swigert, Jr.
The crew’s understated radio message to Mission Control
was "Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here." Within 321,860
kilometers of Earth, an oxygen tank in the Service Module exploded. The
only solution was for the crew to abort their planned landing, swing around
the Moon, and return on a trajectory back to Earth. Because their command
module "Odyssey" was almost completely dead, however, the three
astronauts had to use the Lunar Module "Aquarius" as a crowded
lifeboat for the return home. The four-day return trip was cold, uncomfortable,
and tense. But Apollo 13 proved the program’s ability to weather
a major crisis and bring the crew back home safely.
January 31-February 9, 1971
Crew: Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar
D. Mitchell
After landing in the Fra Mauro region—the original destination
for Apollo 13—Shepard and Mitchell took two Moon-walks, adding
new seismic studies to the by-now familiar Apollo experiment package,
and using a "lunar rickshaw" pull-cart to carry their equipment.
A planned rock-collecting trip to the 1,000-foot-wide Cone Crater was
dropped, however, when the astronauts had trouble finding their way around
the lunar surface. Although later estimates showed that they had made
it to within 30.48 meters of the craters rim, the explorers had
become disoriented in the alien landscape. Roosa, meanwhile, took pictures
from on board the Command Module "Kitty Hawk" in lunar orbit.
On the way back to Earth, the crew conducted the first U.S. materials
processing experiments in space. The Apollo 14 astronauts were
the last lunar explorers to be quarantined on their return from the Moon.
July 26-August 7, 1971
Crew: David R. Scott, James B. Irwin, Alfred M. Worden
The first of the longer, expedition-style lunar landing
missions was also the first to include the lunar rover, a carlike vehicle
that extended the astronauts’ range. The Lunar Module "Falcon" touched
down near the sinuous channel known as Hadley Rille. Scott and Irwin rode
more than 27.36 kilometers in their rover, and had a free hand in their
geological field studies compared to earlier lunar astronauts. They brought
back one of the prize trophies of the Apollo program—a sample of ancient
lunar crust nicknamed the "Genesis Rock." Apollo 15 also
launched a small subsatellite for measuring particles and fields in the
lunar vicinity. On the way back to Earth, Worden, who had flown solo on
board "Endeavor" while his crewmates walked on the surface, conducted
the first spacewalk between Earth and the Moon to retrieve film from the
side of the spacecraft.
April 16-27, 1972
Crew: John W. Young, Thomas K. Mattingly II, Charles
M. Duke, Jr.
A malfunction in the main propulsion system of the Lunar
Module "Orion" nearly caused their Moon landing to be scrubbed, but Young
and Duke ultimately spent three days exploring the Descartes highland
region, while Mattingly circled overhead in "Casper." What was
thought to have been a region of volcanism turned out not to be, based
on the astronauts’ discoveries. Their collection of returned specimens
included a 11.34-kilogram chunk that was the largest single rock returned
by the Apollo astronauts. The Apollo 16 astronauts also conducted
performance tests with the lunar rover, at one time getting up to a top
speed of 17.70 kilometers per hour.
December 7-19, 1972
Crew: Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, Harrison
H. "Jack" Schmitt
At the end of this last Apollo mission Eugene Cernan earned the distinction
of becoming the last human to stand on the Moon -- so far. While Ronald Evans circled in America,
Jack Schmitt and Cernan collected a record 108.86 kilograms
of rocks during three Moon-walks. The crew roamed for 33.80 kilometers
through the Taurus-Littrow valley in their rover, discovered orange-colored
soil, and left behind a plaque attached to their lander "Challenger,"
which read: "Here Man completed his first exploration of the Moon,
December 1972 A.D. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected
in the lives of all mankind." The Apollo lunar program had ended.
Return to Top
|
|