Apollo

Overview

The Apollo program had been underway since July 1960, when NASA announced a follow-on to Mercury that would fly astronauts around the Moon. But with President John F. Kennedy’s speech of May 25, 1961, declaring the goal of landing an astronaut on the surface of the Moon and returning to Earth by decade’s end, Apollo shifted its focus. That goal was achieved with five months to spare, when, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin touched down in the Sea of Tranquillity.

Apollo was one of the great triumphs of modern technology. Six expeditions landed on the Moon, and one-Apollo 13-was forced to return without landing. Before that, there had been two manned checkouts of Apollo hardware in Earth orbit and two lunar orbit missions.

The Apollo lunar module, or LM, was the first true spacecraft-designed to fly only in a vacuum, with no aerodynamic qualities whatsoever. Launched attached to the Apollo command/service module, it separated in lunar orbit and descended to the Moon with two astronauts inside. At the end of their stay on the surface, the lunar module’s ascent stage fired its own rocket to rejoin the command/service module in lunar orbit.

The teardrop-shaped Apollo command module, the living quarters for the three-man crews, had a different shape from the conical-nosed Gemini and Mercury. The attached cylindrical service module contained supplies as well as the Service Propulsion System engine that placed the vehicle in and out of lunar orbit.

Boosting the Apollo vehicles to the Moon was the job of the giant Saturn V-the first launch vehicle large enough that it had to be assembled away from the launch pad and transported there. A fueled Saturn V weighed more than 2.7 million kilograms at liftoff, and stood 110.64 meters high with the Apollo vehicle on top. The vehicle had three stages: the S-lC, SII, and S-IVB, the last of which burned to send Apollo out of Earth orbit and on its way to the Moon.

The Apollo program greatly increased the pace and complexity of ground operations, both before launch and during the missions, when ground controllers had to track two spacecraft at the same time. The lunar missions also required extensive training. Apollo astronauts logged some 84,000 hours-nearly 10 man years-practicing for their flights: everything from simulations of lunar gravity, to geology field trips, to flying the lunar lander training vehicle.

On January 27, 1967, just as the program was nearing readiness for its first manned flight, tragedy struck. A fire inside an Apollo command module took the lives of astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, who were training inside it at the time. The fire resulted in delays and modifications to the spacecraft, but by October 1968, Apollo 7 was ready to carry three astronauts into Earth orbit. There, they checked out the command/service module (both had been tested in an unmanned mode during the November 1967 Apollo 4 mission, which was also the first flight of the Saturn V). By December 1968, Apollo 8 was ready to try for lunar orbit (on the Saturn V’s third outing), and seven months later Apollo 11 made the first lunar landing.

By the time the Apollo program ended in 1972, astronauts had extended the range and scope of their lunar explorations. The final three missions were far more sophisticated than the first three, in large part because the astronauts carried a lunar rover that allowed them to roam miles from their base. Apollo 11’s Armstrong and Aldrin spent only two-and-a-half hours walking on the surface. On Apollo 17 the Moon walks totaled 22 hours, and the astronauts spent three days “camped out” in the Moon’s Taurus-Littrow valley.

After six lunar landings the Apollo program came to a conclusion (Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions had been canceled in 1970 because of budget limitations), and with it ended the first wave of human exploration of the Moon.

Apollo Statistics

Bibliography

NASA Sources

• Benson, Charles D. and Faherty, William Barnaby. Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations. NASA SP-4204, 1978.
• Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. NASA SP-4206, 1980.
• Brooks, Courtney G., and Ertel, Ivan D. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume III, October 1, 1964-January 20, 1966. NASA SP-4009, 1973.
• Brooks, Courtney G., Grimwood, James M., and Swenson, Loyd S., Jr. Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. NASA SP-4205, 1979.
• Compton, W. David. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions. NASA SP-4214, 1989.
• Cortright, Edgar. Editor. Apollo Expeditions to the Moon. NASA SP-350, 1975.
• Dethloff, Henry C. "Suddenly Tomorrow Came...": A History of the Johnson Space Center. NASA SP-4307, 1993.
• Ertel, Ivan D., and Morse, Mary Louise. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume I, Through November 7, 1962. NASA SP-4009, 1969.
• Ertel, Ivan D., and Newkirk, Roland W., with Brooks, Courtney G. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume IV, January 21, 1966-July 13, 1974. NASA SP-4009, 1978.
• Fries, Sylvia D. NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. NASA SP-4104, 1992.
• Hansen, James R. Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo. NASA SP-4308, 1995.
• Herring, Mack R. Way Station to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis Space Center. NASA SP-4310, 1997.
• Levine, Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. (NASA SP-4102, 1982).
• Morse, Mary Louise, and Bays, Jean Kernahan. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume II, November 8, 1962-September 30, 1964. NASA SP-4009, 1973.
• Pitts, John A. The Human Factor: Biomedicine in the Manned Space Program to 1980. NASA SP-4213, 1985.

Non-NASA Sources

• Armstrong, Neil A., Collins, Michael, and Aldrin, Edwin E. First on the Moon. (Little, Brown and Company, 1970).
• Chaiken, Andrew. A Man on the Moon. (Viking, 1994).
• Cooper, Henry S.F. Apollo on the Moon. (Dial Press, 1969).
• _____. Moon Rocks. (Dial Press, 1970).
• _____. Thirteen: The Flight that Failed. (Dial Press, 1973).
• Harland, David M. The First Men on the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11. Springer-Praxis, 2006.
• Lambright, W. Henry. Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
• Lewis, Richard S. The Voyages of Apollo: The Exploration of the Moon. (Quadrangle, 1974).
• Logsdon, John M. The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest. (The MIT Press, 1970).
• McDougall, Walter A. ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. (Johns Hopkins University Press, rep. ed. 1997).
• Murray, Charles A., and Cox, Catherine Bly. Apollo, the Race to the Moon. (Simon and Schuster, 1989).
• Orloff, Richard W., and David M. Harland. Apollo: The Definitive Sourcebook. Springer-Praxis, 2006.
• Pellegrino, Charles R., and Stoff, Joshua. Chariots for Apollo: The Making of the Lunar Module. (Atheneum, 1985).
• Wilhelms, Don E. To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist’s History of Lunar Exploration. (University of Arizona Press, 1993).

Web Sites

• NASA History Division Apollo Web site: http://history.nasa.gov/apollo.html
• The Apollo Surface Journal: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/
• Kipp Teague’s Apollo Web site: http://www.apolloarchive.com/

Apollo Missions

Apollo 7

11–22 October 1968

Crew:Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donn F. Eisele, Walter Cunningham

Apollo 7 was a confidence builder. After the January 1967 Apollo launchpad fire, the Apollo Command Module had beenextensivelyredesigned. Walter 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 could use the Saturn IB booster rather than the giant SaturnV. 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, 11 days in orbit took its toll on the astronauts. The food was bad, and all three astronauts developed colds. But their mission proved the spaceworthiness of the basic Apollo vehicle.

Apollo 9

3–13 March 1969

Crew: James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, Russell L. “Rusty” Schweickart

Apollo 9 was the first space test of the third critical piece of Apollo hardware—the Lunar Module (LM). For 10 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 (CM), 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, and the CM was Gumdrop. Rusty Schweickart and David 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.

Apollo 11

16–24 July 1969

Crew: Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr.

Half of Apollo’s primary goal—a safe return—was achieved at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on 20 July 1969 when Neil Armstrong piloted the 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.” Buzz Aldrin joined him, and the two spent 2.5 hours drilling core samples, photographing what they saw, and collecting rocks. After more than 21 hours on the lunar surface, they returned to Michael Collins on board Columbia, bringing 20.87 kilograms (45.91 pounds) of lunar samples with them. The two moonwalkers 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.”

Apollo 12

14–24 November 1969

Crew: Charles “Pete” Conrad, Jr., Richard F. Gordon, Jr., Alan L. Bean

The second lunar landing was an exercise in precision tar geting. The descent was automatic, with only a few manual corrections by Pete Conrad. The landing in the Ocean of Storms brought the Lunar Module Intrepid within walking distance (182.88 meters [600 feet]) of a robotic spacecraft that had touched down there two-and-a-half years earlier. Conrad and Alan Bean brought pieces of the Surveyor 3 back to Earth for analysis and took two moonwalks that lasted just under 4 hours each. They collected rocks and set up experiments that measured the Moon’s seismicity, solar wind flux, and magnetic field. Meanwhile, Richard Gordon, aboard 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.

Apollo 14

31 January–9 February 1971

Crew: Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell

After landing the Lunar Module Antares in the Fra Mauro region—the original destination for Apollo 13—Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell took two moonwalks, adding new seismic studies to the by now familiar Apollo experiment package and using a “lunar rickshaw” pullcart to carry their equipment. A planned rock-collecting trip to the 304.8-meter-wide (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 (100 feet) of the crater’s rim, the explorers had become disoriented in the alien landscape. Stuart Roosa, meanwhile, took pictures from on board 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 upon their return from the Moon.

Apollo 15

26 July–7 August 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 car-like vehicle that extended the astronauts’ range. The Lunar Module Falcon touched down near the sinuous channel known as Hadley Rille. David Scott and James Irwin rode more than 27 kilometers (16.74 statute miles) 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, Alfred Worden, who had flown solo on board Endeavour 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.

Apollo 16

16–27 April 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 John Young and Charles Duke ultimately spent three days exploring the Descartes highland region, while Thomas 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 an 11.34-kilogram (24.95-pound) 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 17.7 kilometers per hour (10.94 miles per hour).

Apollo 17

7–19 December 1972

Crew: Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt

The last man to set foot on the Moon was also the first scientist—astronaut/geologist Jack Schmitt. While Ronald Evans circled in America, Schmitt and Eugene Cernan collected a record 108.86 kilograms (239.49 pounds) of rocks during three moonwalks. The crew roamed for 33.8 kilometers (20.96 statute miles) 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.