![]() 21, 1968, and returned home a week later, on Dec. The mission also showcased how the mission-support facilities could work together with the vehicles and the crewmembers.Īpollo 7 was soon followed by the first Apollo lunar mission, Apollo 8, which launched on Dec. Aboard Apollo 7, the crew demonstrated the functionality of the command and service module. 11, 1968, orbited Earth for more than a week and splashed back down on Oct. After this first disaster, NASA tested its capabilities and resolved outstanding safety issues with uncrewed missions dubbed AS-201, AS-202, AS-203, and Apollo missions 4 through 6.Ĭrewed flights resumed with Apollo 7, which launched on Oct. The astronauts of the Apollo 1 crew would be the only fatalities of NASA's push to land on the moon. The agency put crewed missions on hold while it reevaluated its systems to make sure they were safe enough to fly. But the deaths instead forced NASA to improve astronaut safety requirements. Chaffee and Gus Grissom - died in the fire.Īt the time, it seemed like the Apollo program might be over before it really even began. All three astronauts inside - Ed White, Roger B. 27, 1967, when a fire ignited within the Apollo 1 command module while the crew was performing a prelaunch test. Those flights set the stage for the lunar landing and served as the testing grounds for the burgeoning technologies and strategies that were eventually used in that mission.Īpollo 1, originally named Apollo Saturn-204 or AS-204, was to be the program's first crewed mission, set to orbit Earth with three astronauts aboard. Although other astronauts visited the lunar surface after Apollo 11, the triumphant first landing remains a pinnacle in spaceflight history.Īpollo 11 was successful only because of the missions that came before it. Project Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, even though NASA accomplished Kennedy's goal in 1969. gross domestic product (GDP) at the time annually for approximately 10 years. government ended up allocating $25 billion in 1960s dollars to the Apollo program, or about 2.5% of the U.S. The announcement lit a fire under the teams at NASA to complete the task on a seemingly impossible timeline.īut the ambitious goal required an equally ambitious budget. Kennedy's famous speech at Rice Stadium the next year inspired Americans to dream big. Eisenhower's administration, but it's most strongly associated with Kennedy's declaration.) This seemingly impossible task quickly became the ultimate goal of the Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo. (The idea of a moon mission was first discussed during Dwight D. So, in 1961, Kennedy decided to take charge and proposed to Congress the goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade. But this expectation was not realized in the space race, and the Soviet Union beat the U.S. "There's an expectation that if anything's going to happen in science and technology, America's going to be first," Siddiqi said. was feeling on top as the country's economy grew. "Pretty much every single major event in the space race in the early days was a triumph of Soviet space achievement."Īfter World War II, Siddiqi explained, the U.S. "I think in America, at least, there a feeling of a great lack of self-confidence, a feeling of 'We are falling behind,'" Asif Siddiqi, a space historian at Fordham University in New York, told. But until the moon landing itself, the Soviet space program was ahead overall, with successful missions including Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit Earth, and Luna 2, the first space probe to touch the moon. efforts in this contest included two predecessors to Project Apollo: Project Mercury, which began in 1958, and Project Gemini, which followed in 1961. The two Cold War rivals were both determined to outdo the other and land humans on the lunar surface first. This speech invoked a new urgency in the space race, which had been going on between the U.S. ![]() Kennedy famously declared in 1962 to a captivated crowd at Rice Stadium in Texas. Slideshow: How NASA's Apollo Astronauts Went to the Moon We choose to go to the moon Fifty years after the Apollo 11 mission, people around the globe are once again reflecting on and celebrating the moon landing, the odds that were stacked against it and how it continues to influence spaceflight. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |