Space 
Apollo Program: Man on MoonThe Apollo program was initiated by President Kennedy in his May, 25th 1961 address: the USA were to land men on Moon before decade's end and return them safely back Earth. The U.S. Moon program was a response to the lead which the USSR was looking like to take at the time as far as the space conquest was concerned (more at the tutorial'Half a Century of Space Conquest'). The Gemini program, between March 1965 and November 1966, did serve like the essential bridge between the Mercury flights and the Apollo program, as it encompassed 10 flights. Those tested out rendezvous and docking techniques that would prove crucial for the lunar program. And a new, powerful Moon launcher -the Saturn V rocket- on the other hand, was designed and built. The Ranger series of spacecraft were designed to impact the lunar surface and to take high-quality pictures of the Moon and transmit them back to Earth in real time. The images were to be used for scientific study, as well as selecting landing sites for the Apollo moon missions. The Ranger 7, by 1964, was the first of the Ranger series to be entirely successful. Surveyors then, which were landers also helped to select Apollo landing sites as they made a soft landing, taking photographs and sending information on the bearing strength of the lunar soil, the radar reflectivity and temperature. A team of 400,000 people in total worked to ensure the success of the Apollo program. Computer science was just coming into existence at the time as NASA, since August 1961, contracted with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop the guidance and navigation system for the Apollo spacecraft. The Apollo guidance software proved robust and no software bugs were found on any crewed Apollo missions, and it was adapted for use in Skylab, the Space Shuttle, and the first digital fly-by-wire systems in aircraft. Of note that the years of the Apollo Program coincided with the height of the civil rights movement in the USA, the intersection of these two subjects being particularly relevant in NASA's southern facilities where programs of equal employment opportunity were promoted
click to a series of pictures illustrating the Apollo program!
 | Apollo 11 mission taking off. picture courtesy site 'Amateur Astronomy' |
->The Rangers
The goal of the Ranger series of spacecraft was to acquire close-up images of the lunar surface. As the development of Surveyors began before the upper Centaur stage of the launch vehicle was ready, engineers didn't know how much payload it could hoist, and made it simple with more added with craft following in the program. That JPL program, begun in 1960, consisted of three phases of increasing complexity. The first phase of the program, designated 'Block 1,' was designed to test the Atlas-Agena launch vehicle by placing a Ranger spacecraft in a highly elliptical Earth orbit where its equipment could be tested. The second 'Block 2' phase built on the lessons of Block 1 to send three spacecraft to the Moon to collect images and data and transmit them back to Earth. Each Block 2 Ranger carried a television camera for collecting images, a gamma-ray spectrometer for studying the minerals in the lunar rocks and soil, and a radar altimeter for studying lunar topography. These spacecraft also carried a capsule containing a seismometer and transmitter that would be able to operate for up to 30 days after being dropped on the lunar surface, protected from the impact by being encased in balsa wood. The final 'Block 3' phase consisted of four spacecraft that each carried a high-resolution imaging system consisting of six television cameras with wide- and narrow-angle capabilities. They were capable of taking 300 pictures per minute. The Block 1 and 2 Rangers met with limited success. Neither Ranger 1 nor 2 left low Earth orbit due to booster problems. Ranger 3 missed the Moon by 22,000 miles and sailed on into solar orbit, returning no photographs but taking the first measurements of the interplanetary gamma ray flux. Ranger 4 was the first American spacecraft to impact the Moon, and on its far side to boot, but due to a power failure in its central computer could not return any images or data. Ranger 5 missed the Moon by 450 miles and also failed to return images due to a power failure and entered solar orbit. None of the Block 2 Rangers delivered their seismometer capsules to the Moon's surface. Ranger 6, the first of the Block 3 spacecraft, successfully impacted on the Moon but its television system failed to return any images due to a short circuit. All hopes rested on Ranger 7 to redeem the program. On July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Atlas-Agena rocket first placed the spacecraft into Earth orbit before sending it on a lunar trajectory. A mid-course correction was successfully carried out the day after launch. On July 31, Ranger 7 reached the Moon. The success of the Ranger 7 might have been due to that someone in mission control was eating peanuts. Since then, JPL teams have broken out peanuts for luck during milestone events. During its final 17 minutes of flight, the spacecraft sent back 4,316 images of the lunar surface. The last image taken 2.3 seconds before impact had a resolution of just half-a-meter. The area in which it crashed – between Mare Nubium and Oceanus Procellarum – was renamed Mare Cognitum, Latin for "The Sea that has Become Known," in honor of being the first spot on the Moon seen close-up. Two more Ranger missions followed. Ranger 8 returned more than 7,000 images of the Moon. Ranger 9 returned "live" TV images of the Alphonsus crater and the surrounding area as it approached its crash site in the crater – letting millions of Americans see the Moon up-close as it was happening. Based on the photographs returned by the last three Rangers, scientists felt confident to move on to the next phase of robotic lunar exploration, the Surveyor series of softlanders
The Surveyor Landers, Pathfinders to The Apollo Landings at Moon
The Surveyors landers were a series of missions serving like a pathfinder to the Apollo program landings on Moon. In 1961, when the U.S. President John Kennedy, in a famed speech, set a goal of landing astronauts on our Moon, little was known of our satellite, in fact. Telescopic observations had made that astronomers knew the Moon was rocky, bleak and heavily cratered but nothing about whether the surface was sufficiently solid to support Apollo landers, bringing to the need of exploratory robotic missions. The first probes to reach Earth’s nearest neighbor had been Russian with the Luna 2 impacting in 1959 and a orbiter imaging the moon later that year. Then came the U.S. impactor probes Ranger, with Ranger 7 the first success in the series, returning 4,300 images of increasing resolution during the final 17 minutes of flight in 1964. The USSR scored another coup when it made the first soft landing and took the first low-resolution photos of the Moon's surface, in February 1966. U.S. again then with mapping spacecraft called Lunar Orbiter photographying the Moon from orbit in 1966 and 1967 (it was the Langley center which designed and managed the Lunar Orbiter project which was the third in a series of NASA programs designed to choose the most suitable landing spot. The Lunar Orbiter photographed nearly all the Moon's surface in a series of spectacular closeups as some of the lunarscapes of the far side had never before been seen by the human eye). Thence, as the Apollo program already had gotten in high gear and first landings planned in 1968 or 1969, it was up to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to scout the lunar surface for the U.S. through the Surveyor landers. That needed a big leap from impactors and airbag landing to a controlled landing as it required new, never-before-attempted techniques in guidance, navigation, robotics and high-res imaging. Originally, the Surveyor program had been in the pipeline even before President Kennedy speech, like scientific investigators of the Moon as the new lunar program turned them into supporting that goal. No landing on a celestial body had been ever attempted then and the probability of a success was around 10 to 15 percent only. First Surveyors were tasked with reaching the lunar surface successfully via a soft landing and investigating the physical properties of the nearby landscape, providing ground-level information at potential Apollo landing sites to be combined with orbital imagery from the Lunar Orbiters. Surveyor pictures were taken from the same height a astronaut would see as he was standing there. Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters carried fully automated film processing laboratories. After processing, the film was scanned for radio transmission of the pictures back to Earth
The first mission in the series, the Surveyor 1, made a successful soft landing on June 2, 1966 and proved the spacecraft design and landing technique. Engineers at the JPL were not sure the communication link for navigation and control would remain uninterrupted. The lab had just recently finished a new space flight operations facility, the SFOF, which had a telemetry connection with Goldstone, a tracking station in the California desert. That station had to accomodate the communication needs of the spacecraft during landing. The Surveyor 1 had been sent on a direct trajectory, with no lunar orbit before landing, and it hurtled towards the surface at 6,000 mph (9,700 kilometers per hour) and the thrusters had to fire at precisely the right moment and maintain perfect orientation to communicate with Earth, all the way down, a bold endeavour at the time. A member of the JPL followed the descent to the Moon directly from the Goldstone site because signal dropouts had been endured during previous missions. Finally, the landing carried live through the TV network on a national coverage not only worked but the coverage had extended to the world! The landing site was a few dozen miles (kilometers) North of a 13-mile (21-kilometer)-wide crater called Flamsteed, within Oceanus Procellarum. Space photography was still in its infancy at the time and the Surveyor's camera was a advanced one and the first such arrangement to be used aboard a space mission, a slow-scan television imager with a zoom lens. Imagery, generally, had like a goal to identify and investigate specific surface features. The Surveyor 1 also took sets of panoramic images which were created by teams at ground, using a Polaroid camera attached to a 5-inch-diameter small TV screen and then assembling the photographs into a larger image. Such panoramic photos were to allow to get a sense of the overall nature of the Moon surface and any threats it might pose to the LEM Apollo lunar lander. After a mission of six months, 11,240 images were returned, allowing dozens of panoramas and the examination of details as small as 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) in diameter. The fact that the three footpads were imaged demonstrated that landing on the Moon was possible, and that the lander had not sunk into a deep dust as feared by some scientists. The Moon surface was firm and supportive
Other Surveyor headed to Moon. The Surveyor 3 had a scoop attached to a extendable arm which allowed scientists to investigate the texture and hardness of the lunar surface.
The Surveyor 6 had a engineering test to see if its rockets could be restarted on the Moon as the spacecraft lifted 12 feet high and moved 8 feet West of its original landing site. The Surveyor 7 was the last of the series, completing its operations by February 1968, which was just 10 months before Apollo 8 orbited the Moon. Surveyor 7 was targeted to a more scientifically diverse site, the crater Tycho, as previous missions had surveyed potential Apollo landing sites. The spacecraft survived one 14-day lunar night, but damage to its battery limited operations during the second lunar day as it returned approximately 21,000 pictures and studied the chemical composition of the lunar surface, finding lower concentrations of iron than at other landing sites. It also tested the Apollo laser retro-reflector experiment concept. Five of the seven Surveyor missions achieved a soft landing on the lunar surface and explored areas that looked promising for Apollo astronauts to visit. Cumulatively, the five spacecraft operated for about 17 months, returned 87,000 photographs from the lunar surface and performed chemical analyses of the soil at three of the landing sites. In February 1968, the NASA Apollo Site Selection Board chose five potential landing zones for the first manned mission, meeting suitability criteria such as smooth flat terrain and a clear approach path, based on the information collected by Surveyors on the Moon’s surface and Lunar Orbiters in orbit around the Moon. The Surveyor program thus was critical to the accomplishment of landing a crew on the Moon by July 1969
On Aug. 10, 1966, the first of five lunar orbiters launched to the Moon, the Lunar Orbiter 1, built by The Boeing Co., which was hauled by a Atlas SLV-3 Agena-D rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The series was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the moon’s surface for selection of landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. The five lunar orbiters thus returned images of 99 percent of both the near- and far-side surfaces of our Moon, sending back a total of 3,062 photos. The orbiters were commanded to crash on the surface before their attitude control gas ran out and they not be a hazard to the Apollo missions. Data retrieved during the Lunar Orbiter Program, which was led out of NASA’s Langley Research Center, also allowed engineers to confirm that the hardware for the Apollo spacecraft would protect astronauts from solar-particle events
The idea behind how to go to Moon was a set of various modules taking part to the journey. All began in Earth's orbit, as the mission eventually came back Earth. The Saturn V launcher was a three-stage, 363-ft tall rocket which was especially constructed for the Moon project as its development had been placed under the direction of Werner von Braun and had taken one year only! It necessarily needed to be composed of three stages, otherwise it could not have propulsed the Apollo missions on their Moon trajectories. Participating into the Apollo, and other U.S. space programs, the Saturn family of rockets racked up a 100% success rate of 32 launches. The Saturn V rocket still holds the Guinness Book of World Record's title of 'Largest Rocket Ever.' Test of the Saturn V engines took place in Huntsville, Ala. as the launcher's second stage featured 5 engines. To alleviate the second stage's weight, the one of the liquid oxygen and hydrogen was decreased as engineers called Floridan surfers to help with their know-how in terms of honeycomb related to their surfboards. The Saturn V was launching from Cape Canaveral. During test flights, the first one of Saturn V unfolded successfully in November 1967, on the Apollo 4 flight as the Apollo 6, by April 1968, endured a resonance question affecting the whole of the rocket's structure, which was fixed through a condensator installed in the first stage. A faulty engine also occurred as a second one was cut off due to a inversion of the cable commanding a emergency cutoff. The Saturn V was launching from Cape Canaveral (which is now called the 'Kennedy Space Center', KSC). Lunar operating modules -the Lunar Module (LM) and the Command and Service Module (CSM)- were atop the rocket. The Lunar Module was a four-legged lander. It was stored inside the Saturn V third stage's upper part. It was comprising two stages: one ascent, and one descent one. The engine of the latter was used to slowdown the module during the descent as the engine of the ascent stage was used to rocket back the astronauts into lunar orbit by the end of their Moon's walk. The Command and Service Module was at the summit of the third stage of the Saturn V. It was itself topped by an emergency-rocket. The CSM was comprising the Command module (CM) and the Service module (SM). The Command module is the famed, top cone-shaped capsule. It's in it that the crew was during most of the mission. The Service module was a cylinder-shaped module which served like a technical compartment, engine-fitted, and providing the manned capsule with miscellaneous life-sustainment support. It is this module which exploded during the Apollo 13 mission. The Service module's engine was called the 'Service Propulsion System' (SPS). Apollo missions were manned with a three-crewmembers crew. Two astronauts only were allowed to the Moon, aboard the Lunar Module as the third astronaut was remaining in orbit aboard the CSM. For each mission, the Command module and Lunar module were given a name. 'Columbia' and 'Eagle', for example, in the case of Apollo 11. The three crewmembers were sorting into a commander, a Command module, and a Lunar module pilot. John C. Houbolt, a engineer from NASA Langley Research Center, and collegues, was instrumental into devicing the idea of a separate crew capsule and lunar lander. Since 1959, as he had studied various technical aspects of space rendezvous, he became convinced, like several others at Langley, that lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) was not only the most feasible way to make it to the Moon. At the time many scientists thought the only way to achieve a lunar landing was to either build a giant rocket twice the size of the Saturn V (the concept was called Nova) or to launch multiple Saturn Vs to assemble the lunar ship in Earth orbit (an approach known as Earth orbit rendezvous). Against that scepticism, Houbolt took the bold to skip proper channels and to write a private letter to NASA's Associate Administrator against ostracization of lunar orbit rendezvous. Weight, cost and savings of using LOR were obvious once one realized that LOR was not fundamentally much more difficult than Earth orbit rendezvous. While initially a skeptic, Dr. Wernher von Braun, director of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, agreed that the lunar orbit rendezvous approach would simplify reaching Kennedy's goal in a timely manner. 'A drastic separation of these functions into two separate elements is bound to greatly simplify the development of the spacecraft system and result in a very substantial saving of time,' he said. Studies and debates continued during the following months and in a July 11, 1962, at a news conference, NASA Administrator James Webb announced the decision: 'We have studied the various possibilities for the earliest, safest mission,' he said. 'We find that by adding one vehicle to those already under development, namely, the lunar excursion vehicle, we have an excellent opportunity to accomplish this mission with a shorter time span, with a savings of money and with equal safety.' Initially dubbed the lunar excursion module, the name was later changed to simply lunar module, or LM. According to George Low, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, NASA believed the word "excursion" might sound frivolous. The contract for designing and building the LM was awarded to Grumman Aerospace in November 1962 as a year earlier, North American Aviation began work on the mother ship called the command/service module. At the base of the LM was the descent propulsion system. The variable throttle rocket engine allowed astronauts to control the final descent from about 50,000 feet, including hovering as the commander picked out the best spot to land. The upper half of the LM served as the ascent stage, to liftoff from the Moon's surface and into a trajectory for rendezvous with the command module which had staid in lunar orbit. The LM also featured 16 reaction control system thrusters mounted in groups of four, for maneuvering in both landing and ascent. Astronaut Collins wrote that it was 'the weirdest looking contraption I have ever seen in the sky.' The first LM built however did not match the tough NASA criteria and test as a window even bursted. The LM then endured a first unpiloted flight test was Apollo 5, launched Jan. 22, 1968 as the LM performed so well that a second such test was deemed unnecessary, as piloted test flights occurred with the Apollo 9 in March 1969 (Earth orbit) and Apollo 10 in May 1969 when a LM descended to 50,000 feet above the lunar surface. The LM ascent engine had to start as soon as the first attempt because there was very little chance that it would have at a second try. Astronauts endeavoured to alleviate any weight, jettisonning boots, gloves, space suits, cameras, etc. The lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) concept was thus a Langley contribution, as the center was home to several of the most significant facilities used to develop LOR techniques and prepare astronauts for Apollo missions. Langley tested the Saturn-Apollo vehicle in wind tunnels, and trained 24 astronauts in rendezvous and docking, Lunar Excursion Module landing, and reduced-gravity walking. The Applied Guidance and Flight Mechanics Branch of NASA Aero-Astrodynamics Laboratory planned the lunar trajectories for the Apollo program including the 'free return' trajectory which allowed for a safe return in the event of a systems failure -- a trajectory used on Apollo 13, and the first three Apollo flights to the Moon
->More About the Saturn V's F-1 Engines
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center generally designed, developed and managed the production of the Saturn I and the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn had been developed since 1958 and the 162-foot-tall Saturn I vehicle, SA-1, flight test, for example, occurred in 1961, flying a flawless 215-mile ballistic trajectory from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, with a dummy second stage. In 1961, a site of static testing for the Saturn program was chosen, and named Mississippi Test Operations, operated by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center until it became an independent NASA installation in 1988 and was renamed Stennis Space Center. The Saturn I launch vehicle was built at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Fabrication and Assembly Engineering Division as Marshall was also to design, develop and manage the production of the Saturn V rocket (among others at the at the Michoud Assembly Facility). The Saturn V launch vehicle also carried three separate crews to the Skylab space station and was used for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The Saturn V engines for the first stage, or the S-IC, were five F-1 engines, the most powerful single-nozzle, liquid fueled rocket engine ever developed and still holding the record as such. The F-1 engine was developed by Rocketdyne under the direction of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and was propelled by a mixture of RP-1, a type of kerosene, and liquid oxygen. Each mighty engine stood 19 feet tall by 12 feet wide and weighed over 18,000 pounds. The rationale behind the F-1 was the Soviet successes in that arena and also by U.S. plans to the Moon. The F-1 engine had roots outside NASA, born as an Air Force program developed by the aerospace firm Rocketdyne in 1955. NASA inherited it during a transfer of projects and awarded Rocketdyne a follow-on contract to step up work on propulsion system not long after NASA's formation, in 1960. The engines were developed by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and its industry team as the Marshall Space Flight Center also tested the F-1 engine. The Saturn V's first stage thus was powered by a five-engine cluster for the 7.5 million pounds of thrust needed to lift it from the launch pad. The mighty engines were fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and refined kerosene as the cluster burned more than 15 metric tons of propellant per second during its two-and-one-half-minutes of operation as it lifted the vehicle to a height of about 36 miles and to a speed of about 6,000 mph! At 19 feet high and just over 12 feet wide, the bell-shaped engine with tubular
walls designed for regenerative cooling, the heart of the engine was the thrust chamber, which mixed and burned the fuel
and oxidizer to produce thrust. A domed chamber at the top of the engine supplied liquid oxygen to the injectors, and also served as a mount for the gimbal bearing which transmitted the thrust to the body of the rocket. Below this dome were the injectors, which directed fuel and oxidizer into the thrust chamber, a design to promote mixing and combustion. Fuel also was supplied to the injectors from a separate manifold; some of the fuel first travelled in 178 tubes down the length of the thrust chamber -which formed approximately the upper half of the exhaust nozzle- and back in order to cool the nozzle. The 'S-IC thrust structure' was a component of the S-IC, absorbing the forces created by the five F-1 engines and redistributing them into uniform loading around the base of the rocket. The thrust structure also provided support for the engines and engine accessories and miscellaneous equipment. The Saturn V 'Instrument Unit served' as the nerve center for the rocket, providing guidance and control, command and sequence of vehicle functions, telemetry and environmental control. It was manufactured by IBM in Huntsville, Alabama. The J-2 engine, as far as it is concerned, was developed by Rocketdyne under the direction of the Marshall Space Flight Center. It was propelled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The J-2 was initially rated at 200,000 pounds of thrust, but a higher thrust was needed for the second and third stages of the Saturn V, beginning with the Apollo 9 launch vehicle. A cluster of five J-2 engines powered the S-II, second stage of the Saturn rocket while a single one was employed on the S-IVB, the third stage of the Saturn V. A cryogenic testing of the Saturn V second stage, the S-II occurred by March 1968 to certify the integrity of the LH2 liquid hydrogen tank. Any S-II stage later scheduled for use on crewed launch vehicles would undergo the cryogenic proof test at the Mississippi Test Facility -- today's NASA Stennis Space Center -- to further certify the structural capability of the stage. Saturn's third, S-IVB stage was developed under the direction of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and was powered by one J-2 engine capable of producing 225,000 pounds of thrust. Saturn V engineers had to solve the 'combustion instability' question, pressure swings in the engine caused by the multiple streams of liquid oxygen and rocket fuel combining and igniting at extremely high pressures in such a way that causes violent vibrations and destruction
->Training Vehicles to The LM
One of the most difficult tasks to landing a man on the Moon was the actual lunar landing. Astronauts used several tools to train for the landing, and possibly the most critical was the LLRV and its successor the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV). The concept of the LLRV and LLTV appeared by about 1960. Using these vehicles, astronauts mastered the intricacies of landing on the Moon by simulating the Lunar Module’s (LM) performance. Dubbed the 'flying bedstead,' those tools were 'a much unsung hero of the Apollo Program' like a astronaut said. Open-framed LLRV and LLTV used a downward pointing turbofan engine to counteract five-sixths of the vehicle’s weight to simulate lunar gravity and LM-like thrusters for attitude control. The astronauts were thus able to simulate maneuvering and landing on the lunar surface while still on Earth. Bell Aerosystems of Buffalo, NY, built the LLRV, the first pure fly-by-wire aircraft to fly in Earth’s atmosphere, meaning it relied exclusively on an interface with three analog computers to convert the pilot’s movements upon commands, to digital signals transmitted by wire and then execute his commands. The LLTVs were overall similar to the LLRVs, but used newer electronic technologies that made them lighter and allowed for improvements in their structural integrity. Bell built two LLRVs and three LLTVs as the first Bell built LLRV was released in April 1964 to NASA’s Flight Research Center (FRC), now Armstrong Flight Research Center, in California, with the initial test flight in October. Later, Neil Armstrong, as commander of Apollo completed his lunar landing training in LLTV-2, making his final flight just three weeks before the historic Moon landing mission. Armstrong said about the LLTV: '[The LM] Eagle flew very much like the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle which I had flown more than 30 times…. I had made from 50 to 60 landings in the trainer, and the final trajectory I flew to the landing was very much like those flown in practice. That of course gave me a good deal of confidence – a comfortable familiarity.' Summarizing its usefulness to the Apollo training program, Armstrong said: “It was a contrary machine, and a risky machine, but a very useful one.” All prime and backup Moon landing commanders completed intensive training in the LLTV, and those who landed a LM on the Moon attributed their success to this training. The LLTV, generally, were subject to crash. Armstrong himself, had a training crash aboard a LLRV on May 6, 1968 as he had been assigned at the time like a backup commander to the Apollo 9 mission. At the Ellington AFB near the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, during his 22nd flight of the test vehicle, he suddenly lost control of it and chose to eject about 200 feet above the ground, parachuting safely and not injured. A accident investigation board showed that a loss of helium pressure caused depletion of the hydrogen peroxide used for the reserve attitude thrusters. The vehicle’s instrumentation did not provide adequate warning about the adverse situation. NASA engineers corrected the problems before flights resumed in October of that same year. Additional improvements were also made in terms of how the LLRV resisted to gust of winds (50 percent of thrust was added), or radars interfered (radars were just turned away from the test area). A series of five tests began with LM-2, the second test LM available to NASA on March 21, 1969, and finished on May 7, dropping the LM from heights onto artificial slopes and obstructions to simulate landings on rough lunar terrain. The LM-2 ascent stage in 1970, spent several months on display at the US Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, mated to the descent stage of Lunar Test Article-8 as, when returned to the United States, it was reunited with its descent stage and modified to appear like the Apollo 11 LM-5 Eagle, and transferred to the Smithsonian in 1971 for display. Since 2016, curators restored and relocated it to the new Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall in the National Air and Space Museum
->The Apollo ELS, the Parachutes of The Apollo Program
In terms of how the Apollo missions were to return Earth, NASA developed the Apollo Earth Landing System (ELS) of parachutes a program which began development in January 1962 as the program had to match the continual growth of the Command Module's weight -- especially due to the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 -- as the weight had passed from 8,150 to 13,000 lbs. After numerous tests, the ELS was declared safe for human missions after a last test performed on July 3, 1968. Contractor Northrop Ventura conducted drop tests at the Joint Parachute Test Facility, Naval Air Research Facility, in El Centro, California. Beginning in 1963, and over the next five years, the contractor completed 34 drop tests using boilerplate capsules, in addition to multiple drop tests using lower fidelity mockups and wind tunnel and laboratory tests, a range of off-nominal scenarios included. The parachutes for the Apollo 7 mission were scheduled to be delivered for installation in the CM in November 1967, while the qualification program was still underway. In its final configuration, the Apollo ELS consisted of nine parachutes deployed in a complex sequence: three main parachutes, three pilot parachutes, two drogue parachutes and one forward heatshield separation parachute. During a normal reentry, the sequence began at 24,000 feet with the jettison of the forward heat shield, aided by the deployment of a 7-foot parachute. Two 16.5-foot drogue parachutes opened 1.6 seconds later to provide initial deceleration and stabilization and remained attached to the CM until about 11,000 feet altitude. At drogue disconnect, three 7-foot pilot parachutes deployed, providing sufficient force to extract the main parachute packs, opening the three 83.5-foot main parachutes, which inflated to fully open condition through a two-step reefing process. The three main parachutes slowed the CM to about 22 miles per hour at splashdown, and provided enough margin that should one fail, the splashdown would still be safe for the crew. The Apollo ELS performed exceptionally well during the 16 Apollo missions, with one notable exception during the Apollo 15 recovery, when one of the three main parachutes collapsed, resulting in a slightly higher than anticipated splashdown velocity but no injury to the crew, proving the planned redundancy of the system.
In the late spring of 1968, NASA, ahead of the first Apollo manned flights, successfully conducted two thermo-vacuum critical tests at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston to certify components of the Apollo spacecraft for human space flight, to checked that the Apollo crewed components maintained the proper environment for crew and equipment in the vacuum and temperature extremes of space. They verified the space-worthiness of the Command and Service Module (CSM) and the Lunar Module (LM). Those tests were also the first conducted under safety criteria revised as a result of the Apollo fire in January 1967
 | Apollo's Command and Service Module. picture courtesy NASA |
As the Mercury and Gemini programs used a ground-based tracking and communication system called the Manned Space Flight Network and run by Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, it could not be adapted for use outside Earth orbit, so NASA decided to make a clone of JPL's Deep Space Network. The Apollo program needed full-time communications support, and JPL had its own missions, so DSN engineers helped design and operate a 'parallel network'. The space-worthiness of the Command Module (CM) and the Lunar Module (LM) were tested by late spring 1968 before the first manned flights by Apollo 7 for the CM and, at the time, Apollo 8 for the LM. Manned tests were performed at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston within the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory (SESL). Completed in 1965, the SESL housed two chambers, A and B, for thermo-vacuum testing of large spacecraft. Based upon lessons learned from the Apollo fire, the cabin’s atmosphere at the beginning of the test was a mixture of 60 percent oxygen and 40 percent nitrogen. Engineers then pumped down the environment to vacuum and replaced the cabin’s atmosphere with pure oxygen as the same procedure followed in an actual spaceflight. The Apollo space suit Portable Life Support System (PLSS) flight unit, more commonly known as the 'backpack,' provided life support to astronauts during their lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) moonwalks. Weighing 68 pounds on Earth, the PLSS pressurized the suit, supplied breathing oxygen, removed carbon dioxide, particulates and odors, provided cooling, and controlled humidity within safe and comfortable limits
->Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11 First Step on Moon Dialogue Transcript
Neil Armstrong owed to be the first to get out of the LM to the fact that, at the contrary of how that unfolded with the Gemini program, where pilots were performing any spacewalk and not the commander of the mission, the Apollo program had commanders to perform and not the pilots. Armstrong thus, like the commander of Apollo 11 was the first man ever to walk on Moon
. Houston Control: Okay. Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now. We can see you coming
. N. Armstrong: Okay, I just checked getting back up to that first step, Buzz. It's... The strut isn't collapsed too far, but it's adequate to get back up
. Houston Control: Roger. We copy
. N. Armstrong: Takes a pretty good little jump
. N. Armstrong: I'm at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It's almost like a powder. Ground mass is very fine
. N. Armstrong: I'm going to step off the LM now. That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind
. E. Aldrin: That looks beautiful from here, Neil
. N. Armstrong (after he collected a contingency lunar sample): It has a stark beauty all its own. It's like much of the high desert of the United States. It's different, but it's very pretty out there
. N. Armstrong: Are you getting a TV picture now, Houston?
. Houston Control: Neil, yes we are getting a TV picture. You're gonna fill the view now
. E. Aldrin: Okay. Are you ready for me to come out?
. N. Armstrong: All set
. E. Aldrin: Ok I'm on the top step. It's a very simple matter to hop down from one step to the next
. N. Armstrong: You have got three more steps and then a long one
. E. Aldrin: Okay. I'm going to leave that one foot up there and both hands down to about the fourth rung up
. N. Armstrong: There you go
. E. Aldrin: Okay. Now I think I'll do the same
. N. Armstrong: A little more. About another inch
. N. Armstrong: There, you've got it
. E. Aldrin: That's a good step
. E. Aldrin: Beautiful view!
. N. Armstrong: Isn't that something! Magnificent sight out there
. E. Aldrin: Magnificent desolation
. E. Aldrin: Very fine powder, isn't it?
. N. Armstrong: Isn't it fine?
. E. Aldrin: Hey, Neil, didn't I say we might see some purple rocks?
. N. Armstrong: Find a purple rock?
. E. Aldrin: Yep. Very small, sparkly fragments
- Buzz Aldrin is erecting the solar wind experiment now -
. Houston Control: Columbia, Columbia, this is Houston. AOS; over
. Houston Control: Roger. The EVA is progressing beautifully. I believe they are setting up the flag now
. Houston Control: I guess you're about the only person aroung that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene
. M. Collins: That's all right. I don't mind a bit
. Houston Control: They've got the flag up now and you can see the stars and stripes
->The Man who Deviced the U.S. Flags Planted on Moon
Jack Kinzler then Chief of the Technical Services Division at JSC, had designed the U.S. flags that Apollo astronauts planted on the Moon (and he latter also deviced the parasol which helped fixing the Skylab station troubles). The decision to plant the American flag on the Moon was made rather late in the lead-up to the mission. NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine created the Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing and appointed Willis H. Shapley, NASA Associate Deputy Administrator, as its chair on Feb. 25, 1969. The committee received advice from the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Archivist of the United States, the NASA Historical Advisory Committee, the Space Council, and congressional committees. The most common suggestion received was to carry an American flag and plant it on the Moon, and that is what the committee recommended to Administrator Paine. Robert L. Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center in Houston, selected Jack A. Kinzler, Chief of the Technical Services Division, to design a flag and mechanism to allow it to “fly” in the airless lunar environment. With less than three months before the first Moon landing flight, Kinzler, assisted by Deputy Division Chief David L. McCraw, designed the mechanism in just a few days. The flag system was attached to the forward landing leg of the Lunar Module (LM) and it would withstand the heating from the LM's descent engine during the landing. Over the next three years, five more flags joined the one left by Apollo 11. The first flag left by Apollo 11 cannot be seen nowadays from the lunar orbit like some are, and is presumably no longer standing. During ascent back from the lunar surface, Aldrin claimed he caught a glimpse of the flag getting knocked over during liftoff. On the later landings, astronauts planted the flags farther from the LM. The status of the Apollo 14 and 15 flags cannot be determined conclusively, although it looks like the Apollo 14 flag took quite a beating from the LM engine exhaust during liftoff. The flag that Apollo 17 left on the Moon was somewhat unique. It was a flag that went to the Moon and back on Apollo 11, hung on the wall in Mission Control until it made a return trip to the Moon, this time to stay. An identical flag made a round trip on Apollo 17 and now hangs in Mission Control. The U.S. flag had been first flown in space with Alan B. Shepard suborbital flight by May 1961 as it was also flown to all solar system planets, and other celestial objects reached to by NASA missions. The Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing also recommanded that, beyond the U.S. flage, Apollo 11 astronauts should carry two more items to the Moon: a stainless steel plaque bearing the images of the two hemispheres of the Earth and this inscription 'Here men from the Planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind,' with the signatures of the three astronauts and President Richard M. Nixon also appearing on the plaque. The plaque was mounted on the forward landing leg strut of the LM. At last, messages of goodwill from 73 world leaders were etched on a one-and-one-half-inch silicon disc using the technique to make microcircuits for electronic equipment. The crew placed the disc on the lunar surface at the end of their spacewalk
. want to know more about watches, stylos and cameras used by the Apollo missions? check the Watches, Stylos and Cameras Used by the Apollo Missions page
->The Story of The Bunny Girl
Chinese used to see a 'rabbit on the Moon' as figured by mare outline, with lore associated with. That was mentioned during the Apollo 11 landing in 1969, as recorded by that radioing between Mission Control in Houston and astronaut Michael
Collins, who had remained in orbit: 'Houston: Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, there's one
asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend
says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chango-o has been living there for 4,000
years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of
immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large
Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet
in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported / Michael Collins: OK. We'll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl'
 | click to a diagram of how a Apollo mission was unfolding |
Generic instruction in geology, including classroom work and field trips, became part of overall astronaut training beginning in 1964. But once a crew was designated that had a very good chance of actually walking on the lunar surface and collecting rock and soil samples, NASA realized that specialized instruction in geology was necessary. At Kennedy, the Apollo Program not only involved test flights of the spacecraft,
as well as the Saturn 1B and Saturn V boosters, but development and construction
of the massive infrastructure including the Vehicle Assembly Building -which serve to integrate the launch ensemble- the Launch
Control Center and Launch Pads 39A and B. Each flight was preceded with a Countdown Demonstration Test (CDDT), also tied in the Mission Control Center at MSC, and the Manned Space Flight Network. A coordination was existing between the Manned Spacecraft Center, a inheritance of the Mercury era, and The Apollo Spacecraft Program. The Saturn V launcher was prepared and configured inside
the tall 'Vehicle Assembly Building', part of NASA's Cape Kennedy assets, and which is still in use today for the Space Shuttle missions. The Saturn V rocket, along with its launch tower, for a total weight of 12.8 million lbs, was then moved atop a crawling transporter to the launch pad during a slow, one-mph, 3.5-mile rollout! All crew missions were preceded with tests and rehearsals as hardware was also. Different Apollo program manufacturers to send into the KSC the varied elements of the rocket and mission vehicles as they were mated, tested, etc. The first stage was first pushing the Saturn V at more than 40 miles high at a speed 6,000 mph as the first stage's engines were then falling back into the ocean. Once launched, the Saturn V was inserting the third stage, which was topped by the Command and Service module (CSM), into a Earth's orbit. On that orbit, which was reached after 12 minute only, and after one and a half orbit, the third stage's engine had the 'go' to be fired for a so-called 'translunar injection burn,' or 'injection translunar' (ITL), which propelled the set unto its lunar trajectory which was to last 3 days of coast. The CSM then separated from the third stage, reverted, and extracted the LM from its storage position in the third stage. It remained then docked to it through a 'Lunar Module Adapter.' Once prepared that way, the 'lunar train' was beginning its journey to the Moon, which was to last three days. Beginning with Apollo 13, the Saturn S-IVB rocket stages were deliberately impacted on the lunar surface after they were used. Seismometers placed on the moon by earlier Apollo astronauts measured the energy of these impacts to shed light on the internal lunar structure. The safety of astronauts with regard to solar energetic events during the Apollo missions, was guaranteed through the network of Pioneer craft which were monitoring space weather, as launched between 1965 and 1968. During the Apollo lunar missions, the fleet of Pioneers provided hourly updates on the Sun's activity. A series of tracking stations around the world used to monitor all aspects of the mission
->Four Radiation-Detecting Pioneers
NASA's Ames Research Center managed a Pioneer program of solar orbiters, to help with the Apollo program. Between 1965 and 1968, four Pioneer space probes entered solar orbit to make comprehensive measurements of interplanetary magnetic fields and the flow and structure of the solar wind. The spacecraft also acted as the world's first space-based solar weather network providing data on solar storms that can impact communications and power systems on Earth, and that could potentially affect Apollo astronauts traveling to the Moon and back. The fourth in the series, Pioneer 9, launched November 8, 1968, on a Delta E rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida, and entered a solar orbit with a mean radius just slightly inside Earth's, making a revolution around the Sun every 298 days. Equipped with eight instruments, the solar powered probe recorded and transmitted data on magnetic fields, plasma, cosmic rays and cosmic dust in interplanetary space. Scientists correlated the findings from these instruments with information gathered by the other Pioneers, in similar solar orbits but spaced at varying intervals from each other, just inside or outside of Earth's orbit. During the Apollo lunar missions, the fleet of Pioneers provided hourly updates on the Sun's activity. Shared with flight controllers in Houston, their data provided early warnings of intense, otherwise unexpected blasts of solar protons that could have endangered the lives of astronauts. Planned for six-months of operations, all four Pioneers far exceeded their design lives. Taking advantage of this longevity, scientists used the spacecraft to conduct joint observations of a large solar flare in August 1972 with another spacecraft, Pioneer 10, then more than twice the Earth's distance from the Sun and on its way to Jupiter. Contact with Pioneer 9 was lost in 1983
By Moon's approach, the SPS was fired. Such a burn was used to insert the CSM-LM into their lunar orbit. Once the crew prepared for the landing, the two astronauts scheduled for it were entering the Lunar Module. The Lunar Module then separated from the CSM and descended to Moon. The third astronaut was remaining aboard, in orbit. When the Apollo lunar modules reached the 100-foot (30-meter) point, the dust was like a fog making it difficult to see their landing site. Descent engines of the Apollo landers were ejecting up to one-and-a-half tons of rocks and soil. Once the surface operations completed, the upper part of the LM was fired, at it used its lower part like a launch pad of sort, and it brought back the astronauts into the lunar orbit. The LM, then, was chasing the CSM and docked to it. The two astronauts transfered back to the Command module. Once the crew ready for the journey back Earth -and the LM jettisoned- the engine of the Service module (SPS) was fired again to insert the CSM onto its route back Earth. The journey back took three days again! By the neighbourhood of the Earth, the Command module -the top cone, with the three crewmembers- eventually separated from the Service module and it was entering the Earth's atmosphere, as it was protected by its heat shield from the friction and the intense heat generated! The capsule finally parachuted to a gentle ocean-splash, with rescue teams, which had been brought to the landing area aboard carriers of the US Navy, picking the crew and the capsule up. As home to the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Pearl Harbor west of Honolulu on the island of Oahu became a focal point for the recovery of Apollo missions returning from the Moon. Recovery ships sailed from Pearl Harbor to meet the returning capsules, and take the crewmembers to their first port of call in Honolulu. In terms of biohazards, the National Academy of Sciences recommended in 1964 that NASA institute a quarantine program for astronauts and their samples returning from lunar landing missions. While the risk of back contamination of Earth with any possible lunar micro-organisms was considered remote, contemporary scientific knowledge could not rule it out. The quarantine program would also protect the lunar samples from any contamination by terrestrial organisms, allowing scientists to examine them in as pristine a condition as possible. An Interagency Committee on Back Contamination (ICBC), comprising several federal agencies involved in protecting public health was formed in 1966 to oversee the plans for contamination prevention. The ICBC and NASA reached an agreement that a 'Mobile Quarantine Facility,' or MQF, be designated, which would transport returning crews, samples, and film from the prime recovery ship to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) at the Manned Space Center. In June 1967, NASA awarded a contract to build four MQFs and supporting hardware, such as a collapsible tunnel that could connect the MQF to a Apollo Command Module. For the first three Moon landing missions, returning astronauts were quarantined immediately after splashdown in a Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) aboard the prime recovery ship as it sailed back to Pearl Harbor. There, the MQF with the crew inside would be taken off the ship, transported by land to Hickam Air Force Base and placed aboard a C-141 aircraft for the flight back to Houston. NASA recovery engineers were also inside with the Apollo crew. Beginning with Apollo 15, NASA eliminated the need for quarantine and the crews greeted public officials and well-wishers face to face, without the barrier of the MQF. MQFs vere converted Airstream trailers of the time
->More About the LRL
The Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) was a critical ground component of the
Apollo program. Located in Building 37 of the Manned Spacecraft
Center (MSC), now the Johnson Space Center in Houston, it was specially designed
and built to isolate astronauts and rock samples returning from the Moon to
prevent back-contamination of the Earth by any possible lunar micro-organisms.
The quarantine time for the returning astronauts was for a period of 21 days
starting the day of exposure to the lunar surface environment. The LRL was
completed in the summer of 1967 and the laboratories and other areas outfitted
in the following months. The LRL consisted of four major functional areas – the Crew Reception Area
(CRA), the Sample Operations Area both inside the biological barrier, and the Radiation Counting Laboratory, and the
Administrative and Support Area. A complex
vacuum system ensured that air could not escape from the facility and also that, on the other way,
the terrestrial atmosphere would not contaminate any of the pristine lunar
samples. The CRA included dormitories for not only the three returning astronauts but
also for the staff who were in quarantine with the crew. The Apollo Command
Module was kept in quarantine in its own room within the CRA. In October and November 1968, the LRL was tested during a
10-day simulation of operations, as 82 major and minor faults in equipment were found to require correction. A Operational Readiness Inspection Committee was named for that, and a month-long series of reviews brought the committee's recommendations. The LRL staff responded quickly to those and the facility was ready to support the first Moon landing in
July 1969
->The ALSEP and EASEP Suite of Science Instruments
As far as gaining knowledge during lunar voyages is concerned, NASA scientists conceived the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP) in 1963, a suite of experiments that promised maximum scientific return for minimum weight and complexity as in 1965, the National Academy of Sciences Space Science Board proposed 15 major areas for study, including lunar geology and seismology, from which NASA developed the specific experiments for ALSEP. In 1966, NASA approved the experiments and selected the Bendix Corporation to design, manufacture, test, and provide operational support for ALSEP. The first ALSEP flight system was formally accepted by NASA in July 1968 as ALSEP experiments were
For the first lunar landing, primarily due to limited crew time during the single surface spacewalk, NASA decided to fly a smaller package called the Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package (EASEP) consisting of only two experiments. The two EASEP experiments were the PSEP and the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector, which contained an array of fused silica cubes arranged to reflect a laser beam precisely back to its point of origin on Earth to measure the Earth-Moon distance to an accuracy of 1.57 inches. NASA later added two additional experiments to the first landing mission, the Lunar Dust Detector to measure the accumulation of dust on the lunar surface and the Solar Wind Composition Experiment, consisting of an aluminum foil panel to collect particles emitted by the Sun to determine their elemental composition. On each subsequent Apollo lunar mission, NASA flew a subset of the accepted ALSEP experiments, as well as additional experiments approved at later dates
During their flight from Earth, either the ALSEP or the EASEP were stowed in the Scientific Equipment Bay of the Lunar Module's (LM) Descent Stage. The crew manually retrieved the packages once on the lunar surface and deployed the experiments approximately 100 yards from the LM. Designed to operate for one year after the crew departed, most of the experiments operated far longer providing scientists with a wealth of new information about the Moon, its environment, and its interior
As soon as by January 1970, the Apollo 11 Lunar Science Conference was met in Houston to that scientists who had conducted preliminary studies of Apollo 11 lunar samples met to share their findings. 1,300 individual samples totalling 18 pounds, or about one-third of the material had been distributed in the UUSA, and eight other countries. No evidence of any living organisms, past or present, had been found. Concrete conclusions generally were hard to hold due to the short time allowed to studies, or that the samples came from a single location on the Moon. There was 'a large amount of undigested data and very little interpretation.' The prestigious journal Science dedicated its Jan. 30, 1970, edition to the papers presented at the conference. The Lunar Science Conference evolved into an annual event, for the first three years meeting in January and then every March thereafter. In 1978, the organizers renamed it the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference to reflect the broadened scope of topics discussed. It keeps existing nowadays. The release to scientists of the lunar material that the Apollo 12 astronauts returned from the Moon's Ocean of Storms in November 1969 followed a less formal process than the Apollo 11 samples
->The Apollo 11 Mission Videos Restored!
Since 1969, a restoration effort has been made to produce even better videos from various source and should be completed by September 2012. 15 scenes representing the most significant moments of the three and a half hours that Armstrong and Aldrin spent on the lunar surface have been treated. Black and white images of Armstrong and Aldrin bouncing around the Moon's surface were provided by a single small video camera aboard the lunar module which featured a non-standard scan format and NASA used a scan converter to optically and electronically adapt these images to a standard U.S. broadcast TV signal. The tracking stations converted the signals and transmitted them using microwave links, Intelsat communications satellites, and AT&T analog landlines to Mission Control in Houston. Original broadcast by the CBS news corporation were recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as kinescopes were too found in film vaults at Johnson. By the time the images appeared on international television, they were substantially degraded, generally
 | click to a view of Apollo missions launch, Moon bound, and Earth bound configurations. picture courtesy site 'Amateur Astronomy' based upon a NASA document |
The Apollo program first focused on the Saturn V launcher. Mission elements test flights, and/or manned flights progressively moved from the Earth to the Moon's orbit. The Apollo 11 mission eventually landed on the Moon's soil on July, 20th 1969 EDT. Further missions extended the program, until the last Apollo mission -the Apollo 17- occurred in 1972. The Apollo program, in terms of NASA's policy, became a singular, focused mission, unto which the national spotlight had been turned and that it had to perform under tight, presidentially decreed, deadlines. Lunar samples were brought back Earth during the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 missions. NASA provides a number of these moon rocks for display and public viewing at museums, planetariums and scientific expositions around the world. Hawaian lunar landscapes served to train the Apollo astronauts of missions 13 to 17, a moon buggy included. By the fall of 1970, the final three Apollo missions were canceled as the Apollo 19 would have been commanded by astronaut Fred Haise, pilot of the Apollo 13 mission that was unable to land on the Moon
pictures courtesy site 'Amateur Astronomy' (Apollo 11 mission taking off), NASA (Apollo's Command and Service Module); Apollo configurations sketch based on a NASA document
Website Manager: G. Guichard, site 'Amateur Astronomy,' http://stars5.6te.net. Page Editor: G. Guichard. last edited: 4/8/2019. contact us at ggwebsites@outlook.com