#First man on the moon mission series

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. 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. 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.

#First man on the moon mission series

Dryden announced the Apollo program to industry representatives at a series of Space Task Group conferences. In July 1960, NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. 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.' 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.' Possible missions included ferrying crews to a space station, circumlunar flights, and eventual crewed lunar landings. While the Mercury capsule could support only one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, Apollo would carry three. The Apollo program was conceived during the Eisenhower administration in early 1960, as a follow-up to Project Mercury. Main article: Apollo spacecraft feasibility study

14.3 Apollo 11 broadcast data restoration projectД«ackground Origin and spacecraft feasibility studies.

1.1 Origin and spacecraft feasibility studies.

Apollo also spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and human spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers.

The program laid the foundation for NASA's subsequent human spaceflight capability, and funded construction of its Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center. Overall the Apollo program returned 842 pounds (382В kg) of lunar rocks and soil to Earth, greatly contributing to the understanding of the Moon's composition and geological history. 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.

It stands alone in sending crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit. 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 1973вЂ“1974, and the ApolloвЂ“Soyuz Test Project, a joint United States- Soviet Union low Earth orbit mission in 1975.ДЄpollo set several major human spaceflight milestones. The crew returned to Earth safely by using the lunar module as a 'lifeboat' for these functions. 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. Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. After the first successful landing, sufficient flight hardware remained for nine follow-on landings with a plan for extended lunar geological and astrophysical exploration. It encountered a major setback in 1967 when an Apollo 1 cabin fire killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test. In these six spaceflights, twelve people walked on the Moon.Д®arthrise, the iconic 1968 image from Apollo 8 taken by astronaut William AndersДЄpollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first crewed flight in 1968. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last, Apollo 17, in December 1972. 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. 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 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. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Eisenhower's administration as a three-person spacecraft to follow the one-person Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space. 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.