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space missions
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Apollo 1
On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck the Apollo program when a flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission. Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White, the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for h -
Apollo 2
Apollo-Saturn 203 (AS-203) is sometimes referred to as Apollo 2. It was an unmanned mission that was launched on July 5, 1966 and was destroyed about six hours into the flight though it managed to orbit four times. The main purpose of its flight was to investigate the effects of “weightlessness” on the fuel in the S-IVB tank. It was this particular tank that the Apollo astronauts planned to use to boost them up from the earth’s orbit and towards the moon. The engineers wanted to find out the beh -
Apollo 3
Space mission Apollo-Saturn 202 (AS-202) or informally known as the Apollo 3 was launched on August 25, 1966. It was a sub-orbital test flight that lasted for only an hour and a half. The mission was to test the rocket for its capacity to stay longer in orbit than Apollo 2 did. The plan was to launch it higher by firing the engine four times during the flight while testing the functionality of its command and service module. In addition, the flight of Apollo 3 was to test its heat shield during. -
Apollo 4
Apollo 4, also known as Apollo-Saturn 501 (AS-501), was the first unmanned test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which was used by the Apollo program to send the first men to the Moon. Apollo 4 flew the S-IC first stage and S-II second stage for the first time, and demonstrated the first in-flight restart of the S-IVB third stage. The launch, at 7:00 a.m. EST on November 9, 1967 from Launch Complex 39, was the first from the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida. The miss -
Apollo 5
The Apollo 5 mission tested the Lunar Module in a space environment, in particular its descent and ascent engine systems, and its ability to separate the ascent and descent stages. The descent engine would become the first throttleable rocket engine fired in space. The mission also performed a "fire in the hole" test (as depicted in the mission's insignia) in which the ascent stage engine would be fired while still attached to the descent stage. This was intended to simulate a landing abort dur -
Apollo 6
was the second unmanned Saturn V test launch. This scenario simulates most events in the mission, but does not fully simulate the multiple engine failures during launch and has an extra apogee burn to set the re-entry trajectory which did not occur on the real mission: currently we only support automated prograde and retrograde burns, whereas the real burns on the mission were at an angle to the trajectory. -
Apollo 7
Apollo 7 was the first manned mission in the Apollo program to be launched and was a test flight of the newly redesigned module. During the eleven-day flight, the spacecraft was run through a number of tests, and systems operated as intended. The mission lasted 163 orbits with the crew being the first to beam live telecasts from orbit, giving millions of people their first view of space. -
Apollo 8
Apollo 8, the first flight to take men to the vicinity of the Moon, was a bold step forward in the development of a lunar landing capability. With only minor problems, all spacecraft systems operated as intended, and all primary mission objectives were successfully accomplished. Crew performance was admirable throughout the mission. The navigation techniques developed for translunar and lunar orbital flight proved to be more than adequate to maintain required accuracies for lunar orbit insertion -
Apollo 9
Apollo 9 was the first manned flight of the lunar module and tested this portion of the spacecraft for lunar operations. During the ten-day flight, the spacecraft demonstrated various important functions including a complete rendezvous and docking profile and extravehicular crew operations. All systems performed satisfactorily. The mission completed 151 earth orbits and carried the largest payload ever placed in orbit. -
Apollo 10
The purpose of the mission was to confirm all aspects of the lunar landing mission exactly as it would be performed, except for the actual landing. Additional objectives included verification of lunar module systems in the lunar environment, evaluation of mission-support performance for the combined spacecraft at lunar distance, and further refinement of the lunar gravitational potential. -
Apollo 11
The mission plan of Apollo 11 was to land two men on the lunar surface and return them safely to Earth. The launch took place at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on July 16, 1969, at 08:32 a.m. EST. The spaccraft carried a crew of three: Mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. The mission evaluation concluded that all mission tasks were completed satisfactorily. -
Apollo 12
Apollo 12 was launched at 11:22:00 a.m. EST on November 14, 1969. The mission plan called for a landing in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) area. The launch took place from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft was boosted into space atop a Saturn 5 rocket. After confirming that there was no damage from lightning strikes during the launch, the crew proceeded with the mission as planned. The post-flight evaluation of the mission was that all mission go -
Apollo 13
This mission was planned as a precision lunar landing in the Fra Mauro highlands with the primary objectives of exploring the Moon, surveying and sampling the Imbrium Basin, deploying and activating the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), further developing the capability to work in the lunar environment, and photographing candidate exploration sites. -
Apollo 14
Mission Overview The Apollo 14 mission, with a crew including Alan Shepard Jr., Stuart A. Roosa, and Edgar D. Mitchell, was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on January 31, 1971. It was the third mission to achieve lunar landing. The spacecraft landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, the same area that was to have been explored on Apollo 13. Although the primary mission objectives for Apollo 14 were the same as those of Apollo 13, provisions were made for returning a significantly greater -
Apollo 15
Apollo 15 was the first of the three "J" missions designed to conduct exploration of the Moon over longer periods, over greater ranges, and with more instruments for scientific data acquisition than on previous Apollo missions. Major modifications and augmentations to the basic Apollo hardware were made. The most significant change was the installation of a scientific instrument module in one of the service module bays for scientific investigations from lunar orbit. -
Apollo 16
The successful Apollo 16 manned lunar-landing mission was the second in a series of three J-type missions planned for the Apollo program. These missions were characterized by a larger scientific payload, increased hardware capabiblity, and the battery-powered lunar roving vehicle. These additions resulted in benefits to the Apollo 16 mission, such as a mission of 11.1 days, a stay on the lunar surface of 71 hours, a lunar surface traverse distance of approximately 27 kilometers, and a scientific -
Apollo 17
The splashdown and recovery of the Apollo 17 crew marked the end of the Apollo flight program. The mission plan was for the spacecraft to land in the Moon's Taurus-Littrow region near the rim of the Serenitatis Basin, which seemed to have all the elements geologists would want to explore in this final mission. Cinder cones and steep-walled valleys with large boulders at their base presented the possibility of sampling both young volcanic rock from depth and older mountainous wall material at the
