1.
Apollo program
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Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon, Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first manned flight in 1968. It achieved its goal of manned lunar landing, despite the setback of a 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test. After the first landing, sufficient flight hardware remained for nine follow-on landings with a plan for extended lunar geological and astrophysical exploration, Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. The crew returned to Earth safely by using the Lunar Module as a lifeboat for these functions, Apollo set several major human spaceflight milestones. It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit, Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while the final Apollo 17 mission marked the sixth Moon landing and the ninth manned mission beyond low Earth orbit. The program returned 842 pounds of rocks and soil to Earth, greatly contributing to the understanding of the Moons composition. The program laid the foundation for NASAs subsequent human spaceflight capability, Apollo also spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and manned spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The Apollo program was conceived during the Eisenhower administration in early 1960, while the Mercury capsule could only support one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, Apollo would carry three astronauts. Possible missions included ferrying crews to a station, circumlunar flights. The program was named after the Greek god of light, music, and the sun by NASA manager Abe Silverstein, who later said that I was naming the spacecraft like Id name my baby. Silverstein chose the name at home one evening, early in 1960, in July 1960, NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden announced the Apollo program to industry representatives at a series of Space Task Group conferences. Preliminary specifications were laid out for a spacecraft with a mission module cabin separate from the module. On August 30, a feasibility study competition was announced, and on October 25, 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. In November 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president after a campaign that promised American superiority over the Soviet Union in the fields of space exploration and missile defense. Beyond military power, Kennedy used aerospace technology as a symbol of prestige, pledging to make the US not first but, first and, first if. Despite Kennedys rhetoric, he did not immediately come to a decision on the status of the Apollo program once he became president and he knew little about the technical details of the space program, and was put off by the massive financial commitment required by a manned Moon landing. On April 12,1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, Kennedy was circumspect in his response to the news, refusing to make a commitment on Americas response to the Soviets
2.
Spacecraft
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A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space and then returns to the surface, without having gone into an orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies, robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a body are artificial satellites. Only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules, Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, the launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments, while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layers density and it also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellites false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection, Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No. 1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit and this altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, as of 2016, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft, USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, there were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers, there were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou. Except for the shuttle, all of the recoverable manned orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Manned space capsules The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries, some reusable vehicles have been designed only for manned spaceflight, and these are often called spaceplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, the first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19,1963. The first partially reusable spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight
3.
Lunar orbit
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In astronomy, lunar orbit refers to the orbit of an object around the Moon. As used in the program, this refers not to the orbit of the Moon about the Earth. The Soviet Union sent the first spacecraft to the vicinity of the Moon and it passed within 6,000 kilometres of the Moons surface, but did not achieve lunar orbit. This craft provided the first pictures of the far side of the Lunar surface, the Soviet Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to actually orbit the Moon in April 1966. It studied micrometeoroid flux, and lunar environment until May 30,1966, the first United States spacecraft to orbit the Moon was Lunar Orbiter 1 on August 14,1966. The first orbit was an elliptical orbit, with an apolune of 1,008 nautical miles, then the orbit was circularized at around 170 nautical miles to obtain suitable imagery. Five such spacecraft were launched over a period of thirteen months, all of which successfully mapped the Moon, the most recent was the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, which became a ballistic impact experiment in 2014. The Apollo programs Command/Service Module remained in a parking orbit while the Lunar Module landed. The combined CSM/LM would first enter an orbit, nominally 170 nautical miles by 60 nautical miles. Orbital periods vary according to the sum of apoapsis and periapsis, the LM began its landing sequence with a Descent Orbit Insertion burn to lower their periapsis to about 50,000 feet, chosen to avoid hitting lunar mountains reaching heights of 20,000 feet. These anomalies are significant enough to cause an orbit to change significantly over the course of several days. The Apollo 11 first manned landing mission employed the first attempt to correct for the perturbation effect. The parking orbit was circularized at 66 nautical miles by 54 nautical miles, but the effect was overestimated by a factor of two, at rendezvous the orbit was calculated to be 63.2 nautical miles by 56.8 nautical miles. The Apollo 15 subsatellite PFS-1 and the Apollo 16 subsatellite PFS-2, PFS-1 ended up in a long-lasting orbit, at 28 degrees inclination, and successfully completed its mission after one and a half years. PFS-2 was placed in a particularly unstable orbital inclination of 11 degrees, list of orbits Mass concentration Orbital mechanics
4.
Space rendezvous
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A space rendezvous is an orbital maneuver during which two spacecraft, one of which is often a space station, arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance. Rendezvous requires a precise match of the velocities and position vectors of the two spacecraft, allowing them to remain at a constant distance through orbital station-keeping. Rendezvous may or may not be followed by docking or berthing, procedures which bring the spacecraft into physical contact, in its first human spaceflight program Vostok, the Soviet Union launched pairs of spacecraft from the same launch pad, one or two days apart. The initial separation distances were in the range of 5 to 6.5 kilometers, in 1963 Buzz Aldrin submitted his doctoral thesis titled, Line-Of-Sight Guidance Techniques For Manned Orbital Rendezvous. As a NASA astronaut, Aldrin worked to translate complex orbital mechanics into relatively simple flight plans for my colleagues. The first attempt at rendezvous was made on June 3,1965, McDivitt was unable to get close enough to achieve station-keeping, due to depth-perception problems, and stage propellant venting which kept moving it around. However, the Gemini 4 attempts at rendezvous were unsuccessful largely because NASA engineers had yet to learn the mechanics involved in the process. Simply pointing the active vehicles nose at the target and thrusting was unsuccessful, if the target is ahead in the orbit and the tracking vehicle increases speed, its altitude also increases, actually moving it away from the target. The higher altitude then increases orbital period due to Keplers third law, putting the tracker not only above, as GPO engineer André Meyer later remarked, There is a good explanation for what went wrong with rendezvous. The crew, like everyone else at MSC, just didnt understand or reason out the mechanics involved. As a result, we all got a lot smarter and really perfected rendezvous maneuvers. Rendezvous was first successfully accomplished by US astronaut Wally Schirra on December 15,1965, Schirra maneuvered the Gemini 6 spacecraft within 1 foot of its sister craft Gemini 7. The spacecraft were not equipped to dock with other. When you come to three miles, youve rendezvoused. If anybody thinks theyve pulled a rendezvous off at three miles, have fun and this is when we started doing our work. I dont think rendezvous is over until you are stopped – completely stopped – with no motion between the two vehicles, at a range of approximately 120 feet. Thats when you can go back and play the game of driving a car or driving an airplane or pushing a skateboard – its about that simple. The first docking of two spacecraft was achieved on March 16,1966 when Gemini 8, under the command of Neil Armstrong, Gemini 6 was to have been the first docking mission, but had to be cancelled when that missions Agena vehicle was destroyed during launch
5.
Docking and berthing of spacecraft
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Docking and berthing of spacecraft is the joining of two space vehicles. This connection can be temporary, or semipermanent such as for space station modules, Docking specifically refers to joining of two separate free-flying space vehicles. Berthing refers to mating operations where an inactive module/vehicle is placed into the interface of another space vehicle by using a robotic arm. Because the modern process of un-berthing is manually laborious, berthing operations are seen as unsuited for rapid crew evacuations in the event of an emergency, a docking/berthing connection is referred to as either soft or hard. Typically, a spacecraft first initiates a soft dock by making contact, spacecraft docking capability depends on space rendezvous, the ability of two spacecraft to find each other and station-keep in the same orbit. This was first developed by the United States for Project Gemini, on the revised mission Gemini 6A, Schirra successfully performed a rendezvous in December 1965 with the manned Gemini 7, but there was no docking capability. The first docking with an Agena was successfully performed under the command of Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 on March 16,1966, manual dockings were performed on three subsequent Gemini missions in 1966. The Apollo program depended on lunar orbit rendezvous to achieve its objective of landing men on the Moon. Then after completing the lunar landing mission, two astronauts in the LM had to rendezvous and dock with the CSM in lunar orbit, the spacecraft were designed to permit intra-vehicular crew transfer through a tunnel between the nose of the Command Module and the roof of the Lunar Module. These maneuvers were first demonstrated in low Earth orbit on March 7,1969, on Apollo 9, then in orbit in May 1969 on Apollo 10. The Soviet Union first achieved rendezvous of Soyuz 3 with the unmanned Soyuz 2 craft on October 25,1968, the first Soviet docking was achieved on January 16,1969, between the manned Soyuz 4 and manned Soyuz 5. This early version of the Soyuz spacecraft had no internal transfer tunnel, in the 1970s, the Soviets upgraded the Soyuz spacecraft to add an internal transfer tunnel and used it for their Salyut space station program. The United States docked its Apollo spacecraft to its Skylab space station, in the 1990s, the Russians demonstrated automated docking capability to allow unmanned cargo ships to ferry supplies to their Mir space station and the International Space Station. Docking/berthing systems may be either androgynous or non-androgynous, indicating which parts of the system may mate together, early systems for conjoining spacecraft were all non-androgynous docking system designs. Non-androgynous designs are a form of gender mating where each spacecraft to be joined has a unique design, furthermore, two spacecraft of the same gender cannot be joined at all. Androgynous docking by contrast has an interface on both spacecraft. In an androgynous interface, there is a design which can connect to a duplicate of itself. This allows system-level redundancy as well as rescue and collaboration between any two spacecraft and it also provides more flexible mission design and reduces unique mission analysis and training
6.
Gravity well
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The Sun is very massive, relative to other bodies in the Solar System, so the corresponding gravity well that surrounds it appears deep and far-reaching. The gravity wells of asteroids and small moons, conversely, are depicted as very shallow. The deeper a gravity well is, the energy any space-bound climber must use to escape it. In astrophysics, a gravity well is specifically the potential field around a massive body. Other types of potential wells include electrical and magnetic potential wells, physical models of gravity wells are sometimes used to illustrate orbital mechanics. Gravity wells are frequently confused with embedding diagrams used in relativity theory. If G is the gravitational constant, the external gravitational potential of a spherically symmetric body of mass M is given by the formula. A plot of this function in two dimensions is shown in the figure, the potential function has a hyperbolic cross section, the sudden dip in the center is the origin of the name gravity well. A black hole would not have this closing dip due to its size being only determined by its event horizon, in a uniform gravitational field, the gravitational potential at a point is proportional to the height. As a result, an object constrained to move on the surface will have roughly the same equation of motion as an object moving in the potential field Φ itself, gravity wells constructed on this principle can be found in many science museums. There are several sources of inaccuracy in this model, The friction between the object and the surface has no analogue in vacuum and this effect can be reduced by using a rolling ball instead of a sliding block. The objects vertical motion contributes kinetic energy which has no analogue and this effect can be reduced by making the gravity well shallower. A rolling balls rotational kinetic energy has no analogue and this effect can be reduced by concentrating the balls mass near its center so that the moment of inertia is small compared to mr². A balls center of mass is not located on the surface but at a distance r. For balls of a size, this effect can be eliminated by constructing the surface so that the center of the ball, rather than the surface itself. Consider an idealized rubber sheet suspended in a gravitational field normal to the sheet. The mass density may be viewed as intrinsic to the sheet or as belonging to objects resting on top of the sheet. This equilibrium condition is identical in form to the gravitational Poisson equation ∇2 Φ = −4 π G ρ where Φ is the gravitational potential, in particular, the embedding diagram most commonly found in textbooks superficially resembles a gravity well
7.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
8.
Yuri Kondratyuk
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Yuriy Vasilievich Kondratyuk was a Ukrainian engineer and mathematician. The LOR was later used for the plotting of the first actual human spaceflight to the Moon, many other aspects of spaceflight and space exploration are covered in his works. Kondratyuk made his discoveries in circumstances of war, repetitious persecutions from authorities. Yuriy Kondratyuk is an identity under which the author was hiding after the Russian revolution. Kondratyuk was born as Aleksandr Ignatyevich Shargei in 1897 in Poltava and his father, Ignat Benediktovich Shargei, studied physics and mathematics in Kiev University at the time of his marriage. Kondratyuks mother, Ludmila Lvovna Schlippenbach taught French at a Kiev school and she is a direct descendant of Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach, a general who took part in Charles XII of Swedens failed invasion of Russia. Her grandfather Anton von Schlippenbach was Lt. Colonel of Russian army, ludmyla was devoted to social activism and was imprisoned on several occasions for participating in demonstrations. During her last stay in a Kiev prison, shortly before Aleksandr was born, she was diagnosed with a mental disorder and placed into an asylum in 1902. Aleksandr lived with his father and step-mother in St. Petersburg until 1910, from an early age, Kondratyuk was fascinated by his fathers books on physics and mathematics and demonstrated great abilities in these areas. When he was old enough to attend school, he was admitted straight into the third form of a prestigious high school. Kondratyuk later enrolled at the Great Polytechnic in Petrograd to study engineering, soon he was drafted into the army at the outbreak of World War I and graduated from warrant officer school there. During his military service on the Caucasian Front, Kondratyuk filled four notebooks with his ideas of interplanetary flight. These included suggesting the use of a spacecraft to reach the Moon, leaving the propulsion section of the vehicle on orbit while a smaller lander journeyed to the surface. He included detailed calculations of the trajectory to take a spacecraft from Earth orbit to lunar orbit and back to Earth orbit, Kondratyuk left the army in 1917 following the Russian Revolution and tried to make a living stoking boilers back in Poltava. As a locally born former officer of the Tsarist army, he was at risk of arrest by Bolshevik authorities as an enemy of the people. The following year, Kondratyuk made an attempt to escape for Poland but was stopped and turned back by border guards, ordinarily, he would probably have been shot, but the guards recognised the early symptoms of typhus in him and perhaps decided to spare themselves a bullet. He was nursed back to health by a neighbour, and on the advice of friends and his friends obtained forged identification papers for him, with the name of Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk, born in Lutsk in 1900. With this new identity, Kondratyuk lived in southern Ukraine, Kuban and Northern Caucasus, working as a mechanic and he settled in Novosibirsk in Siberia in 1927
9.
Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle
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The Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, also known as the High Confidence Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle was an alternate Super heavy-lift launch vehicle proposal for the NASA Constellation program. It was first presented on June 17,2009 by John Shannon, NASAs Shuttle Program manager and it was based on the Shuttle-C concept which has been the subject of various studies since the 1980s. The designs of the Space Shuttles External Tank and the four-segment Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters would have been reused, according to NASAs John Shannon the HLV could have be developed within 4 1⁄2 years until the first manned flight occurs. The development program should have costed about US$6.6 billion, an unmanned side-mounted concept of the Space Shuttle named Shuttle-C was the subject of various concepts that were investigated between 1984 and 1995. After the Space Shuttle Columbia accident a two-year industry study was prepared in 2004 and 2005 to further investigate the concept in order to replace the Space Shuttle. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005 also investigated a Shuttle-C option for Project Constellation, all these concepts included the side-mounted carrier to be an autonomous spacecraft which would detach from the External Tank after main engine cut-off similarly to the Space Shuttle. Some of the studies included the reuseability of the Space Shuttle Main Engines on this side-mounted carrier, none of the concepts involved in-ascent fairing separation. The Shuttle-C concept as an only option was not funded in the 1980s and 1990s due to NASAs budgetary constraints. The 2004–2005 industry study provided a proposal, which was looked at by ESAS but was ultimately deemed inferior to the Ares I. Crewed side-mounted Shuttle-C concepts were not looked at all in ESAS, the team involved in analysing and designing the HLV design at NASA include about 60 NASA engineers headed by Rick Manella. The basic vehicle would not require an upper stage, the only completely new hardware development to be required for the HLV was the side-mounted carrier. All other components used on the HLV were previously in use with the Space Shuttle, virtually no change to the existing Space Shuttle infrastructure, from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the External Tank barge to the launch pads was to be required. It would have provided nearly 300,000 pounds-force and had an impulse of 448 sec. Alternatively The United Launch Alliance had proposed that their Dual Thrust Axis Lander could fit in a side mount payload shroud and this would have eliminate the need for evolving the directly shuttle derived vehicle when combined with a fuel depots architecture. The HLVs 4-segment SRBs were to deliver an impulse of 267 sec. The SSME main engines were to be flown at 104. 5% and deliver an impulse of 452 sec and 1,500,000 pounds-force. In contrast to prior proposals of Shuttle-C no part of the vehicle is recoverable and reusable, the HLV was to use a different flight profile than the Space Shuttle because no loads on wings had to be considered. The payload fairing 23,000 pounds was to be jettisoned after 185 seconds into the flight at about 57 nautical miles altitude in order to improve payload mass of the vehicle
10.
Apollo Command/Service Module
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The Command/Service Module was one of two spacecraft, along with the Lunar Module, used for the United States Apollo program which landed astronauts on the Moon. It was built for NASA by North American Aviation and it was launched by itself on three suborbital and low Earth orbit Apollo test missions using the Saturn IB launch vehicle. It was also launched twelve times on the larger Saturn V launch vehicle and it made a total of nine manned flights to the Moon aboard the Saturn V. The Service Module was cast off and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere before the Command Module re-entered, the Apollo 1 flight was cancelled after a cabin fire killed the entire crew and destroyed the Command Module during a launch rehearsal test. Corrections of the problems caused the fire were applied to the Block II spacecraft. Therefore, design proceeded without a means of docking the Command Module to a Lunar Excursion Module, but the change to lunar orbit rendezvous, plus several technical obstacles encountered in some subsystems, soon made it clear that substantial redesign would be required. Block II would be the version, including a docking hatch and incorporating weight reduction. Detailed design of the docking capability depended on design of the LEM, by January 1964, North American started presenting Block II design details to NASA. Block I spacecraft were used for all unmanned Saturn 1B and Saturn V test flights, initially two manned flights were planned, but this was reduced to one in late 1966. This mission, designated AS-204 but named Apollo 1 by its crew, was planned for launch on February 21,1967. After a thorough investigation by the Apollo 204 Review Board, it was decided to terminate the manned Block I phase, the two blocks were essentially similar in overall dimensions, but several design improvements resulted in weight reduction in Block II. Also, the Block I Service Module propellant tanks were slightly larger than in Block II, the Apollo 1 spacecraft weighed approximately 45,000 pounds, while the Block II Apollo 7 weighed 36,400 lb. In the specifications given below, unless noted, all weights given are for the Block II spacecraft. The total cost of the CSM for development and the produced was $36. 9B in 2016 dollars. The Command Module was a truncated cone 10 feet 7 inches tall with a diameter of 12 feet 10 inches across the base, the forward compartment contained two reaction control engines, the docking tunnel, and the components of the Earth Landing System. The inner pressure vessel housed the crew accommodations, equipment bays, controls and displays, the last section, the aft compartment, contained 10 reaction control engines and their related propellant tanks, fresh water tanks, and the CSM umbilical cables. The Command Module consisted of two basic structures joined together, the structure and the outer structure. The inner structure was a sandwich construction which consisted of a welded aluminum inner skin, adhesively bonded aluminum honeycomb core
11.
Apollo Lunar Module
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After completing its mission, the LM was discarded. It was capable of only in outer space, structurally and aerodynamically it was incapable of flight through the Earths atmosphere. The Lunar Module was the first manned spacecraft to operate exclusively in the vacuum of space. It was the first, and to date only, crewed vehicle to land on an object in the solar system other than the Earth. Six such craft successfully landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, a seventh provided propulsion and life support for the crew of Apollo 13 when their CSM was disabled by an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon. The LMs development was plagued with problems which delayed its first unmanned flight by about ten months, despite this, the LM eventually became the most reliable component of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle, the only component never to suffer a failure that significantly affected a mission. The total cost of the LM for development and the produced was $21. 3B in 2016 dollars. At launch, the Lunar Module sat directly beneath the Command/Service Module with legs folded, there it remained through earth parking orbit and the Trans Lunar Injection rocket burn to send the craft toward the Moon. Soon after TLI, the SLA opened and the CSM separated, turned around, came back to dock with the Lunar Module, during the flight to the Moon, the docking hatches were opened and the LM Pilot entered the LM to temporarily power up and test its systems. Throughout the flight, he performed the role of an engineering officer, at this point, the engine was started again for Powered Descent Initiation. During this time the crew flew on their backs, depending on the computer to slow the crafts forward, Control was exercised with a combination of engine throttling and attitude thrusters, guided by the computer with the aid of landing radar. During the braking phase altitude decreased to approximately 10,000 feet, during final approach, the vehicle pitched over to a near-vertical position, allowing the crew to look forward and down to see the lunar surface for the first time. Finally the landing began, approximately 2,000 feet uprange of the targeted landing site. Beginning with Apollo 14, increased LM fuel was available for the powered descent and landing, by using the CSM engine to achieve the 50. After the spacecraft undocked, the CSM raised and circularized its orbit for the remainder of the mission. When ready to leave the Moon, the LM would separate the descent stage and fire the ascent engine to back into orbit. After a few course correction burns, the LM would rendezvous with the CSM and dock for transfer of the crew, having completed its job, the LM was separated and sent into solar orbit or to crash into the Moon. The Lunar Module was designed after NASA chose to reach the Moon via Lunar Orbit Rendezvous instead of the ascent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous methods
12.
Golden Spike Company
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The Golden Spike Company was an American space transport startup active 2010–2013. The company was chartered for business in Colorado with the objective to offer commercial space transportation services to the surface of the Moon. The name of the company is in reference to the final spike placed in the First Transcontinental Railroad upon its completion. The company was announced at a press conference held on December 6,2012 at the National Press Club. Golden Spike was founded in 2010 by Alan Stern, former NASA associate administrator for science, Griffin was the initial Chairman of the Board. Additional members of the board of directors in 2012 were space entrepreneur Esther Dyson, since then, the company has been building its business models and soliciting investment. Currently, the company has budgeted between $7 and $8 billion to achieve their objective, followed by around $1.5 billion fee per each two-human lunar surface mission, Golden Spike will follow a model like that of the Russian spaceflight industry in the 1980s and 90s. Stern says they expect to sign up as many as 15 to 20 countries or foreign space agencies as well as companies and they have identified a mission profile, including various launch options as well as trajectory and spacecraft for landing on the Moon. The two propusion units are disposed of, in Moon orbit the lander and the crew vehicle have a rendez-vous, and the crew move to the lander. They land and return to the vehicle, and return to Earth in the crew vehicle. Spacecraft and components used by this company will all be manufactured by American companies, the first robotic flights to the Moon could happen as soon as 2020. In January 2013, Golden Spike contracted with Northrop Grumman for the design of a new lunar lander, Board of directors, as of 2012, Scientific American wrote that Golden Spikes plans rank among the most audacious privately funded space exploration missions ever proposed. Former director of NASA Johnson Space Center says If NASA wants a ride, NASA was supportive of the effort, and said it showed the merits of supporting commercial spaceflight. Pike of GlobalSecurity. org said that the companys cost estimate was unrealistic, the companys Indiegogo funding campaign raised $19,450 of its $240,000 goal. Shackleton Energy Company Moon Express Space Adventures SpaceX Official website
13.
Atmospheric entry
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Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet or natural satellite. Technologies and procedures allowing the atmospheric entry, descent and landing of spacecraft are collectively abbreviated as EDL. Atmospheric drag and aerodynamic heating can cause atmospheric breakup capable of completely disintegrating smaller objects and these forces may cause objects with lower compressive strength to explode. Manned space vehicles must be slowed to subsonic speeds before parachutes or air brakes may be deployed, such vehicles have kinetic energies typically between 50 and 1800 MJoules, and atmospheric dissipation is the only way of expending the kinetic energy. While the high temperature generated at the surface of the shield is due to adiabatic compression. Other smaller energy losses include black body radiation directly from the hot gasses, ballistic warheads and expendable vehicles do not require slowing at re-entry, and in fact, are made streamlined so as to maintain their speed. Uncontrolled, objects accelerate through the atmosphere at extreme velocities under the influence of Earths gravity, most controlled objects enter at hypersonic speeds due to their suborbital, orbital, or unbounded trajectories. Various advanced technologies have developed to enable atmospheric reentry and flight at extreme velocities. Practical development of systems began as the range and reentry velocity of ballistic missiles increased. For early short-range missiles, like the V-2, stabilization and aerodynamic stress were important issues, medium-range missiles like the Soviet R-5, with a 1200 km range, required ceramic composite heat shielding on separable reentry vehicles. The first ICBMs, with ranges of 8000 to 12,000 km, were possible with the development of modern ablative heat shields. In the U. S. this technology was pioneered by H. Julian Allen at Ames Research Center, over the decades since the 1950s, a rich technical jargon has grown around the engineering of vehicles designed to enter planetary atmospheres. It is recommended that the review the jargon glossary before continuing with this article on atmospheric reentry. When atmospheric entry is part of a landing or recovery, particularly on a planetary body other than Earth, entry is part of a phase referred to as entry, descent and landing. When the atmospheric entry returns to the body that the vehicle had launched from. These four shadowgraph images represent early reentry-vehicle concepts, if the reentry vehicle is made blunt, air cannot get out of the way quickly enough, and acts as an air cushion to push the shock wave and heated shock layer forward. Since most of the hot gases are no longer in contact with the vehicle. The Allen and Eggers discovery, though initially treated as a secret, was eventually published in 1958
14.
Project Gemini
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Project Gemini was NASAs second human spaceflight program. Conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, Gemini started in 1961 and concluded in 1966, the Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews flew low Earth orbit missions between 1965 and 1966 putting the United States in the lead during the Cold War Space Race against the Soviet Union, geminis objective was the development of space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon. With these new techniques proven by Gemini, Apollo could pursue its mission without doing these fundamental exploratory operations. All Gemini flights were launched from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida and their launch vehicle was the Gemini–Titan II, a modified Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Gemini was the first program to use the newly built Mission Control Center at the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for flight control, the astronaut corps that supported Project Gemini included the Mercury Seven, The New Nine, and the 1963 astronaut class. During the program, three died in air crashes during training, including the prime crew for Gemini 9. This mission was performed by the crew, the only time that had happened in NASAs history to date. Gemini was robust enough that the United States Air Force planned to use it for the Manned Orbital Laboratory program, geminis chief designer, Jim Chamberlin, also made detailed plans for cislunar and lunar landing missions in late 1961. He believed Gemini could perform lunar operations before Project Apollo, NASAs administration did not approve those plans. In 1969, McDonnell-Douglas proposed a Big Gemini that could have used to shuttle up to 12 astronauts to the planned space stations in the Apollo Applications Project. The only AAP project funded was Skylab – which used existing spacecraft and he presented two initial versions of Gemini at a NASA retreat at Wallops Island in March 1961. Scale models of Mercury Mark II were shown in July 1961 at McDonnell Aircraft Corporations offices in St. Louis, NASA approved Project Gemini on December 7,1961. The McDonnell corporation was contracted to build it on December 22,1961, when it was publicly announced on January 3,1962, it was formally re-christened Project Gemini. Gemini in Latin means twins or double, which reflected that the spacecraft would hold two astronauts, Gemini is also the name of the third constellation of the Zodiac and its twin stars, Castor and Pollux. He was previously the chief aerodynamicist on Avro Canadas Avro Arrow fighter interceptor program, Chamberlin joined NASA along with 25 senior Avro engineers after cancellation of the Arrow program, and became head of the U. S. Space Task Group’s engineering division in charge of Gemini, the prime contractor was McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, which was also the prime contractor for the Project Mercury capsule. Astronaut Gus Grissom was heavily involved in the development and design of the Gemini spacecraft, the Gemini program was managed by the Manned Spacecraft Center, located in Houston, Texas, under direction of the Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D. C
15.
Apollo 11
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Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20,1969, at 20,18 UTC. Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours later on July 21 at 02,56,15 UTC and they spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Michael Collins piloted the command module Columbia alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moons surface, Armstrong and Aldrin spent just under a day on the lunar surface before rendezvousing with Columbia in lunar orbit. Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16, and was the fifth manned mission of NASAs Apollo program. After being sent toward the Moon by the Saturn Vs upper stage, Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into the lunar module Eagle and landed in the Sea of Tranquility. They stayed a total of about 21.5 hours on the lunar surface, the astronauts used Eagles upper stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that blasted them out of orbit on a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and landed in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience, Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and described the event as one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Apollo 11 was the second all-veteran multi-person crew in human spaceflight history, a previous solo veteran flight had been made on Soyuz 1 in 1967 by Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Collins was originally slated to be the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 8 but was removed when he required surgery on his back and was replaced by Jim Lovell, his backup for that flight. In early 1969, Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective August 1969, charlie Duke, Capsule Communicator Ronald Evans Owen K. Garriott Don L. Low to suggest the Apollo 11 crew be less flippant in naming their craft. During early mission planning, the names Snowcone and Haystack were used and put in the news release, the Command Module was named Columbia after the Columbiad, the giant cannon shell spacecraft fired by a giant cannon in Jules Vernes 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. The Lunar Module was named Eagle for the bird of the United States, the bald eagle. The Apollo 11 mission insignia was designed by Collins, who wanted a symbol for peaceful lunar landing by the United States and he chose an eagle as the symbol, put an olive branch in its beak, and drew a lunar background with the Earth in the distance. NASA officials said the talons of the eagle looked too warlike and after some discussion, All colors are natural, with blue and gold borders around the patch. When the Eisenhower dollar coin was released in 1971, the design provided the eagle for its reverse side. The design was used for the smaller Susan B
16.
Direct ascent
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Direct ascent, or direct injection, is a method of launching a spacecraft to the Moon or to other planets directly, without first going into a parking orbit around the Earth. It was used to launch unmanned probes in the Soviet Luna program, the Apollo program was initially planned based on the assumption that direct ascent would be used. The other two options that NASA considered required a smaller launch vehicle, either the Saturn C-4 or C-5. LOR was the strategy used successfully in Apollo, the Soviet Union also considered several direct ascent strategies, though in the end they settled on an approach similar to NASAs, two men in a Soyuz spacecraft with a one-man LK lander. Science fiction movies such as Destination Moon had frequently depicted direct ascent missions
17.
Launch vehicle
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In spaceflight, a launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket used to carry a payload from Earths surface into outer space. A launch system includes the launch vehicle, the launch pad, Earth orbital launch vehicles typically have at least two stages, and sometimes as many as four or more. Expendable launch vehicles are designed for one-time use and they usually separate from their payload and disintegrate during atmospheric reentry. In contrast, reusable vehicles are designed to be recovered intact. The Space Shuttle was a part of a vehicle with components used for multiple orbital spaceflights. SpaceX has developed a rocket launching system to successfully bring back a part—the first stage—of their Falcon 9 and launch it again. A fully reusable VTVL design is planned for all parts of the ITS launch vehicle, Launch vehicles are often classified by the amount of mass they can carry into orbit. For example, a Proton rocket can lift 22,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit, Launch vehicles are also characterized by their number of stages. Rockets with as many as five stages have been successfully launched, additionally, launch vehicles are very often supplied with boosters supplying high early thrust, normally burning with other engines. Boosters allow the engines to be smaller, reducing the burnout mass of later stages to allow larger payloads. Other frequently reported characteristics of vehicles are the launching nation or space agency. For example, the European Space Agency is responsible for the Ariane V, many launch vehicles are considered part of a historical line of vehicles of same or similar name, e. g. the Atlas V is the latest Atlas rocket. A small-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting up to 2,000 kg of payload into low Earth orbit, a medium-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 2,000 to 20,000 kg of payload into LEO. A heavy-lift launch vehicle is capable of lifting 20,000 to 50,000 kg of payload into LEO, a super-heavy lift vehicle is capable of lifting more than 50,000 kg of payload into LEO. It refers to its 1,500 kg to LEO Vega launch vehicle as light lift, sounding rockets have long been used for brief, inexpensive unmanned space and microgravity experiments. Current human-rated suborbital launch vehicles include SpaceShipOne and the upcoming SpaceShipTwo, minimizing air drag requires a reasonably high ballistic coefficient, a ratio of length to diameter greater than ten. This generally results in a vehicle that is at least 20 m long. Leaving the atmosphere as early on in the flight as possible provides a velocity loss due to air drag of around 300 m/s, Launch vehicles of sufficient size are capable of launching payloads smaller than their orbital capability, to the Moon or beyond
18.
Nova (rocket)
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The image of the Nova C8 is commonly used as a representative of the entire Nova series, and many references to Nova refer specifically to these post-Apollo versions. The two series of designs were essentially separate, but shared their name, thus, Nova does not refer to a specific rocket design, just a rocket larger than the Saturn V in most cases. To add more confusion, the final Saturn V design was larger than some of the early Nova proposals, the first Nova series was designed in-house at NASA in 1959. This project examined several designs, the smallest having four F-1s in the lower stage and this design placed 24 tons in a lunar injection trajectory. These designs were presented to President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 27,1959, the Nova designs were not the only lunar rockets being considered at the time. In 1959 the Army decided it was no longer interested in developing large boosters, for which it had no immediate need and this left NASA with two large booster designs, their own Nova, and von Brauns recently renamed Saturn. Originally, NASA had designed Nova for the direct ascent mission profile, von Braun favoured a profile that built up the spacecraft in Earth orbit, which reduced the launch mass needed for any one launch. A redesign of both plans followed, Nova was still targeting the direct ascent approach, which required the most lift capacity. The most powerful of the resulting normal designs, the 8L, included eight F-1s in the lower stage, other designs in the series replaced the F-1s with large solids, while others studied nuclear rocket engines for the upper stages. Lunar payload for the various models varied between 48 and 75 tons, a number of upgraded Saturns were also studied. Dr. von Brauns original Saturn design became the A-1 model, the more powerful B-1 model used a cluster of Titans for its second stage, but was otherwise similar to the A-1. More radical proposals, those requiring new engines, were lumped together in the C series, c-1 was similar to the A-1, but used new upper stages derived from Titan engines, while the similar C-2 used new J-2 powered upper stages. C-3 through C-5 used the same J-2 powered uppers, but added a new first stage powered by three, four, or five F-1 engines, dr. von Brauns favoured approach remained Earth Orbit Rendezvous, but this time based on two Saturn C-3s. The debate between the approaches came to a head in 1961, and the outcome was unexpected by both teams. Instead of either the direct ascent or earth orbit rendezvous, the group instead selected a third option. LOR had a requirement about midway between the Saturn C-3 and Nova 8L. After studying what would be required to modify either booster to the new requirement of about 200,000 lb in low orbit, it seemed that the Saturn C-5 would be the best solution. The C-2 model would also be built as a testbed system, studies on the Nova series continued into 1962 as a backup for Saturn, but were eventually ended as the Saturn-based LOR profile became ingrained
19.
Earth orbit rendezvous
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It was considered and ultimately rejected in favor of lunar orbit rendezvous for NASAs Apollo Program of the 1960s and 1970s. Three decades later, it was planned to be used for Project Constellation, the Agena target vehicle was used for testing Earth orbit rendezvous in the NASA Gemini Program. Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 rendezvoused in orbit in 1965, next, Gemini 8 successfully docked March 16,1966 with the Agena. The Agena-Gemini rendezvous also achieved many other tasks in later Gemini launches, experiments of Project Gemini involving docking with the Agena target vehicle were designed partly to test the feasibility of this program. This mode had been revived for Project Constellation as the Earth Departure Stage and Altair, the EDS and Altair would be met by the separately launched Orion. Once joined in low Earth orbit, the three would then travel out to the Moon and the Orion/Altair combination would fly a lunar orbit rendezvous flight pattern
20.
Saturn (rocket family)
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The Saturn family of American rocket boosters was developed by a team of mostly German rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. Originally proposed as a satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo moon program. Three versions were built and flown, Saturn I, Saturn IB, the Saturn name was proposed by von Braun in October 1958 as a logical successor to the Jupiter series as well as the Roman gods powerful position. President John F. Kennedy identified the Saturn I SA-5 launch as being the point where US lift capability would surpass the Soviets and this was last mentioned by him in a speech he gave at Brooks AFB in San Antonio on the day before he was assassinated. To date, the Saturn V is the launch vehicle to transport human beings beyond low Earth orbit. A total of 24 humans were flown to the Moon in the four years spanning December 1968 through December 1972, no Saturn rocket failed catastrophically in flight. In the early 1950s all of the branches of the US military were actively developing long-range missiles, most with the help of Germans from the V-2 project. These included the US Navys Viking and US Armys Corporal, Jupiter, the US Air Forces Atlas and Titan used more technology developed in U. S. Infighting among the branches was constant, with the United States Department of Defense often called upon to decide which projects to fund for development. From that point on the Air Force would be the primary missile developer, some time in late 1956 or early 1957 the Department of Defense released a requirement for a heavy-lift vehicle to orbit a new class of communications and other satellites. Since the Wilson memorandum covered only weapons, not space vehicles, in April 1957, von Braun directed Heinz-Hermann Koelle, chief of the Future Projects design branch, to study dedicated launch vehicle designs that could be built as quickly as possible. In any event, these stages would not be available until 1961 or 62 at the earliest. This relatively cheap configuration allowed existing fabrication and design facilities to be used to produce this quick, two approaches to building the Super-Jupiter were considered, the first used multiple engines to reach the 1,500,000 lbf mark, the second used a single much larger engine. Both approaches had their own advantages and disadvantages, building a smaller engine for clustered use would be a relatively low-risk path from existing systems, but required duplication of systems and made the possibility of one engine failure much higher. A single larger engine would be reliable, and would offer higher performance because it eliminated duplication of dead weight like fuel plumbing. On the downside, an engine of this size had never built before and development would be expensive. The engine-cluster appeared to be the way to meet the requirements on time. Super-Jupiter was the first-stage booster only, to place payloads in orbit, ABMA proposed using either the Titan or Atlas as a second stage, optionally with the new Centaur upper-stage
21.
Jim Chamberlin
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Jim Chamberlin was a Canadian aerodynamicist who contributed to the design of the Canadian Avro Arrow, NASAs Gemini spacecraft and the Apollo program. In addition to his air and space efforts, he is often cited as an example of Canadian brain drain to the U. S. He left NASA in 1970 and worked for McDonnell Douglas, in their Houston offices, james Arthur Chamberlin was born in Kamloops, British Columbia on May 23,1915. Chamberlin began his career with the British aircraft company Martin-Baker before returning to Canada. His longest tenure began as an engineer at Noorduyn Aircraft in Montreal, working on the Norseman. Later, as chief of design for the CF-105 Avro Arrow jet interceptor. Following the Canadian governments cancellation of the Avro Arrow project in 1959, while designing the Gemini spacecraft in 1961, Chamberlin proposed that Gemini be paired with a “bug” that would land a single astronaut on the Moon. Chamberlin had been impressed with NASA engineer John Houbolt’s advocacy of Lunar orbit rendezvous as the method to go to the Moon, Chamberlin was described by space historian David Baker as “probably one of the most brilliant men ever to work for NASA. He and his wife had a son and a daughter, NASA awarded Chamberlin its Exceptional Scientific Achievement, Exceptional Service and Exceptional Engineering Achievement medals. Chamberlin was a Professional Engineer of the Province of Ontario, a member of the Institute of Aeronautical Scientists, in 2001, he was inducted into Canadas Aviation Hall of Fame. Arrow Recovery Canada This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
22.
Owen Maynard
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Owen Eugene Maynard was a Canadian engineer who contributed to the design of the Canadian CF-105 Avro Arrow jet interceptor, and NASAs Apollo Lunar Module. Maynard was a member of the group of 32 Canadian and British engineers from Avro Canada who joined NASA when the Arrow was cancelled in 1959, Maynard worked on Project Mercury until 1960 and then moved to the Apollo program. Maynard won a U. S. patent in 1967 for a space station design, Owen Maynard was born in Sarnia, Ontario on October 27,1924. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942, was trained as a Mosquito pilot and he earned a B. A. Sc. in Aeronautical Engineering, from the University of Toronto, Ontario, in 1951. After the war, Maynard was employed by the A. V, roe company, located at what is now Pearson International Airport in Toronto. He began there as a craftsman, and worked on the CF-100 fighter aircraft, after taking time off to obtain his engineering degree, he returned to A. V. Roe as a designer, eventually rising to the position of Senior Stress Engineer and he spent much of this period carrying out engineering design and analysis for the CF-105 aircraft, the Avro Arrow. Initially assigned to be Project Engineer for the first flight-test Mercury capsule, among other activities in that role, he participated in the recovery of the Mercury-Atlas 1 capsule from the sea-floor following the failure of its launch vehicle. During the recovery operations, he performed a 30-foot free-dive to find one particular missing component of the capsule and this failure mode did not recur on those subsequent launches. By 1963, Maynard became chief of the LEM engineering office in the Apollo Program Office in Houston and he held this position for most of the remainder of his career at NASA, for a time in 1966 and 1967, he was also Chief of the Mission Operations Division. While at mission operations, Maynard devised the “A” to “G” sequence for Apollo test flights leading to the first lunar landing on Apollo 11, Maynard left NASA in 1970, following the second lunar landing, and went on to Raytheon in the Boston area. There he worked on many aerospace programs and he also became an advocate for the use of solar power collected on earth for powering spacecraft, and of Solar Power Satellites to collect solar power for usage on Earth. In 1992, he retired from Raytheon, and he and his wife Helen returned to Canada, where settled in Waterloo, Ontario. A brief audio clip on YouTube, extracted from a July 1969 interview, of Owen Maynard providing an engineering answer to the question Why does the LEM look like it does
23.
Space Task Group
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The Space Task Group was a working group of NASA engineers created in 1958, tasked with managing Americas manned spaceflight programs. Headed by Robert Gilruth and based at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, it managed Project Mercury, for instance, President Richard Nixon appointed such a group in February 1969 to outline a post-Apollo spaceflight strategy, chaired by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Created on November 5,1958, the Space Task Group was headed by Robert Gilruth, originally it consisted of 45 people, including eight secretaries and computers, the occupational title for women who ran calculations on mechanical adding machines. Of its 37 engineers,27 were from Langley Research Center, the head of the public affairs office was John Shorty Powers. In 1959, the group was expanded by the addition of 32 engineers from Canada and these new engineers included Jim Chamberlin, George Harris, John Hodge, Owen Maynard, Bryan Erb, Rodney Rose, and Tecwyn Roberts. Webb got the approval of Kennedy, and the Congress, on September 19, Webb announced the new Manned Spacecraft Center would be built on a Houston, Texas site donated by Rice University. By September 1962, his organization was moved to Houston and construction had begun, the MSC facility was completed in September 1963. This council was tasked with making recommendations on the direction of the US civilian, occasionally this council was referred to as a Space Task Group. President John F. Kennedy persuaded Congress to modify the law to him the authority to appoint the Vice President to chair the council in his place. As the Apollo program reached its climax in 1969, President Richard M. Nixon directed Vice President Spiro T. Agnews Space Task Group to recommend a future direction of the US manned space program. Agnew enthusiastically supported an ambitious Space Transportation System program including reusable spacecraft, permanent Earth and Lunar stations, arrows to the Moon - Avros Engineers and the Space Race. Apollo, The Race to the Moon, swenson, Jr. Loyd S. James M. Grimwood, Charles C. Alexander. This New Ocean, A History of Project Mercury, archived from the original on 2007-08-23
24.
Saturn V
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The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload, to date, the Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle to launch missions to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. A total of 15 flight-capable vehicles were built, but only 13 were flown, an additional three vehicles were built for ground testing purposes. A total of 24 astronauts were launched to the Moon, three of them twice, in the four years spanning December 1968 through December 1972 and it was known that Americas rival, the Soviet Union, would also try to secure some of the Germans. Von Braun was put into the design division of the Army due to his prior direct involvement in the creation of the V-2 rocket. Between 1945 and 1958, his work was restricted to conveying the ideas, finally, they turned to von Braun and his team, who during these years created and experimented with the Jupiter series of rockets. The Juno I was the rocket launched the first American satellite in January 1958. The Jupiter series was one step in von Brauns journey to the Saturn V. The Saturn Vs design stemmed from the designs of the Jupiter series rockets, as the success of the Jupiter series became evident, the Saturn series emerged. Between 1960 and 1962, the Marshall Space Flight Center designed a series of Saturn rockets that could be used for various Earth orbit or lunar missions. NASA planned to use the C-3 as part of the Earth Orbit Rendezvous concept, the C-4 would need only two launches to carry out an EOR lunar mission. On January 10,1962, NASA announced plans to build the C-5. The three-stage rocket would consist of, the S-IC first stage, with five F-1 engines, the S-II second stage, with five J-2 engines, the C-5 was designed for a 90, 000-pound payload capacity to the Moon. The C-5 would undergo component testing even before the first model was constructed, by testing all components at once, far fewer test flights would be required before a manned launch. The C-5 was confirmed as NASAs choice for the Apollo program in early 1963, the C-1 became the Saturn I, and C-1B became Saturn IB. Von Braun headed a team at the Marshall Space Flight Center in building a vehicle capable of launching a spacecraft on a trajectory to the Moon. Before they moved under NASAs jurisdiction, von Brauns team had begun work on improving the thrust, creating a less complex operating system. It was during these revisions that the decision to reject the single engine of the V-2s design came about, the Saturn I and IB reflected these changes, but were not large enough to send a manned spacecraft to the Moon
25.
Robert Seamans
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Robert Channing Seamans Jr. was a NASA Deputy Administrator and MIT professor. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to Pauline and Robert Seamans, from 1941 to 1955 he held teaching and project positions at MIT during which time he worked on aeronautical problems, including instrumentation and control of airplanes and missiles. Seamans joined the Radio Corporation of America in 1955 as Manager of the Airborne Systems Laboratory, in 1958, he became Chief Engineer of the Missile Electronics and Controls Division at RCA in Burlington, Massachusetts. From 1948 to 1958, Seamans also served on committees of NASAs predecessor organization. He served as a consultant to the Scientific Advisory Board of the United States Air Force from 1957 to 1959, as a Member of the Board from 1959 to 1962 and he was a National Delegate, Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development from 1966 to 1969. In 1960, Seamans joined NASA as Associate Administrator, in 1965, he became Deputy Administrator, retaining many of the general management-type responsibilities of the Associate Administrator and also serving as Acting Administrator. During his years at NASA he worked closely with the Department of Defense in research and engineering programs, during this period with MIT, he was also a consultant to the Administrator of NASA. In 1969 he became Secretary of the United States Air Force, Seamans was also president of the National Academy of Engineering from May 1973 to December 1974, when he became the first administrator of the new Energy Research and Development Administration. He returned to MIT in 1977, becoming dean of its School of Engineering in 1978, in 1981 he was elected chair of the board of trustees of Aerospace Corp. He died on June 28,2008 in Beverly, Massachusetts, Seamans married Eugenia Merrill on June 13th,1942 in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. He had three sons and two daughters, in 2001, the Sea Education Association named their new sailing research ship SSV Robert C. Seamans, in honor of their former Chairman and Trustee, in the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Seamans was played by Dann Florek. Seamans Jr. Project Apollo, The Tough Decisions, monographs in Aerospace History Number 37. Seamans, Aiming At Targets, The Autobiography Of Robert C, Air Force History Page on Dr. Robert C
26.
Langley Research Center
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Langley Research Center is the oldest of NASAs field centers, located in Hampton, Virginia, United States. It directly borders Langley Field and the city of Poquoson, LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research, but the Apollo lunar lander was flight-tested at the facility. In addition, a number of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site, established in 1917 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, in the early 21st century the Center devotes two-thirds of its programs to aeronautics, and the rest to space. LaRC researchers use more than 40 wind tunnels to study improved aircraft and spacecraft safety, performance, between 1958 and 1963, when NASA started Project Mercury, LaRC served as the main office of the Space Task Group. In 1962-1963 this office was transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, the current director is David E. Bowles. After US-German relations had deteriorated from neutral to hostile around 1916, on February 15,1917, the newly established Aviation Week warned that the U. S. military aviation capability was less than what was operating in the European war. President Woodrow Wilson sent Hunsaker to Europe to investigate, and Hunsakers report prompted Wilson to command the creation of the nation’s first aeronautics laboratory, in 1917, less than three years after it was created, the NACA established Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory on Langley Field. Both Langley Field and the Langley Laboratory are named for aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Aviation Section, U. S. Signal Corps had established a base there earlier that same year. The first research facilities were in place and aeronautical research was started by 1920, initially the laboratory included four researchers and 11 technicians. Langley Field and NACA began parallel growth as air power proved its utility during World War I, the center was originally established to explore the field of aerodynamic research involving airframe and propulsion engine design and performance. In 1934 the worlds largest wind tunnel was constructed at Langley Field with a 30 ×60 foot test section and it remained the worlds largest wind tunnel until the 1940s, when a 40 ×80 foot tunnel was built at NASA Ames in California. Early in 1945, the center expanded to include research, leading to the establishment of a flight station at Wallops Island. A further expansion of the research program permitted Langley Research Center to orbit payloads, as rocket research grew, aeronautics research continued to expand and played an important part when subsonic flight was advanced and supersonic and hypersonic flight were introduced. Langley Research Center can claim many firsts, some of which have proven to be revolutionary scientific breakthroughs. The center also developed standards for the grooving of aircraft based on a previous British design used at Washington National Airport. Grooved runways reduce aquaplaning which permits better grip by aircraft tires in heavy rain and this grooving is now the international standard for all runways around the world. Langley Research Center performs critical research on aeronautics, including wake vortex behavior, fixed-wing aircraft, rotary wing aircraft, air safety, human factors, LaRC supported the design and testing of the hypersonic X-43, which achieved a world speed record of Mach 9.6. LaRC assisted the NTSB in the investigation of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, work began in July 2011 to remove the 1940s era 16 feet transonic wind tunnel
27.
John Houbolt
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This flight path was first endorsed by Wernher von Braun in June 1961 and was chosen for Apollo program in early 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that Man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy, in the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using existing rocket technology. Houbolt was born in Altoona, Iowa in 1919 and he spent part of his childhood in Joliet, Illinois, where he attended Joliet Central High School and Joliet Junior College. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, earning a Bachelors and he later received a PhD in Technical Sciences in 1957 from ETH Zurich. Houbolt began his career at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1942, Houbolt was an engineer at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and he was one of the most vocal of a minority of engineers who supported LOR and his campaign in 1961 and 1962. Once this mode was chosen in 1962, many aspects of the mission were significantly based on this fundamental design decision. He was a guest at Mission control for the Apollo 11 lunar landing and he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1963. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and he was awarded an honorary doctorate, awarded on May 15,2005 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his papers were deposited in the University of Illinois Archives. In 2009, the Illinois House of Representatives adopted HR540 in his honor, in later years he lived in Scarborough, Maine. He died at a home there in 2014 of Parkinsons disease. In the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Houbolt was played by Reed Birney, some engineers were concerned about the risks of space rendezvous, especially in lunar orbit, where there would be no fallback options in case of a major mishap. Houbolt had presented the LOR concept to a series of panels, somewhat as a voice in the wilderness, I would like to pass on a few thoughts. Do we want to go to the moon or not, thank you, John. —Wernher von Braun to Houbolt upon the successful splashdown of Apollo 11. This passage is caught on a NASA film taken at Mission Control in Houston, von Braun recognized this and personally invited Houbolt to the control center for the event. Enchanted Rendezvous, John Houbolt and the Genesis of the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept, monographs in Aerospace History Series #4. Archived from the original on 2006-09-29, interviews with Dr. Wernher von Braun. The Soaring Achievements of John C, Houbolt Permanent, 2-story museum exhibit about John Houbolt and his contributions to the space program. Lunar Landers That Never Were The road to the moon was paved with good intentions, tony Reichhardt, Airspacemag. com, January 1,2008 The Rendezvous That Was Almost Missed Interview with Dr John Houbolt Nova, To the Moon transcript
28.
Apollo 13
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Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The mission was commanded by James A. Lovell with John L. Jack Swigert as Command Module Pilot, Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles. The story of the Apollo 13 mission has been dramatized multiple times and that crew was composed of L. Gordon Cooper, Jr, Donn F. Eisele, Edgar D. Mitchell. Deke Slayton, NASAs Director of Flight Crew Operations, never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission and he assigned them to the backup crew simply because of a lack of flight-qualified manpower in the Astronaut Office at the time the assignment needed to be made. Slayton felt Cooper had no more than a small chance of receiving the Apollo 13 command, if he did an outstanding job with the assignment. Thus, the original assignment Slayton submitted to his superiors for this flight was, shepard, Jr, Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell. Seven days before launch, the Backup Lunar Module Pilot, Charlie Duke and this exposed both the prime and backup crews, who trained together. Mattingly was found to be the one of the other five who had not had rubella as a child. Three days before launch, at the insistence of the Flight Surgeon, Mattingly never contracted rubella and was assigned after the mission as Command Module Pilot to Youngs crew, which later flew Apollo 16, the fifth mission to land on the Moon. Vance D. Brand, Jack R. Lousma, Joseph P. Kerwin, Gene Kranz – White Team, Glynn Lunney – Black Team, Milt Windler – Maroon Team, Gerry Griffin – Gold Team. The astronauts mission insignia was sculpted as a medallion titled Steeds of Apollo by Lumen Martin Winter and was struck by the Franklin Mint. Mass, CSM Odyssey 63,470 pounds, LM Aquarius 33,490 pounds, Perigee,99.3 nautical miles, Apogee,100.3 nautical miles, Inclination,31. 817°, Period,88.19 min. The Apollo 13 mission was to explore the Fra Mauro formation, or Fra Mauro highlands and it is a widespread, hilly selenological area thought to be composed of ejecta from the impact that formed Mare Imbrium. The next Apollo mission, Apollo 14, eventually made a flight to Fra Mauro. April 14,1970 UTC Oxygen tank explosion,03,07,53 UTC,173,790.5 nmi from Earth CSM power down, Crew was on board the USS Iwo Jima 45 minutes later. The mission was launched at the time,02,13,00 PM EST on April 11. An anomaly occurred when the second-stage, center engine shut down two minutes early. The engine shutdown was determined to be caused by severe pogo oscillations measured at a strength of 68 g, the vehicles guidance system shut the engine down in response to sensed thrust chamber pressure fluctuations
29.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
30.
Robert R. Gilruth
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Robert Rowe Gilruth was an American aviation and space pioneer, and the first director of NASAs Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. He worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics from 1937 to 1958 and its successor NASA and he was involved with early research into supersonic flight and rocket-powered aircraft, and then with the United States manned space program, including the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. Gilruth was born October 8,1913, in Nashwauk, Minnesota and he graduated in 1931 from Duluth Central High School. As a teenager, Gilruth was fascinated by aeronautics and spent time building model airplanes and he was inspired to pursue a career in the field after reading about NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia. Gilruth received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 1935, while there he was a member of the Professional Engineering Fraternity Theta Tau, of which he was later inducted as a Hall of Fame Alumnus. In January 1937 Gilruth was hired at NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, until this point, no set of guidelines for pilots and aircraft designers existed. Gilruth also pioneered the recording of data from instruments during flight test and this would go on to become the standard operating procedure. Gilruth had been working on hypersonic missile rockets as the assistant director of the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division of NACA and he and his team pushed their superiors to pursue a program to launch satellites into space, but he was rebuffed by administrators. The dynamic quickly changed after the Soviets succeeded in launching Sputnik, when NASA was created, Gilruth became head of the Space Task Group, tasked with putting a man in space before the Soviet Union. When President John F. Kennedy announced that America would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade in 1961, Gilruth was aghast and unsure that such a goal could be accomplished. He was integral in the creation of the Gemini program, which he advocated as a means for NASA to learn more about operating in space before attempting a lunar landing. Soon the Apollo program was born, and Gilruth was made head of the NASA center which ran it, Gilruth was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1969 and served as director of the MSC until his retirement in 1972. He oversaw a total of 25 manned space flights, from Mercury-Redstone 3 to Apollo 15, Gilruth died in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the age of 86. In the 1996 TV movie Apollo 11, Gilruth was played by William Mesnik, in the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, he was played by John Carroll Lynch. In the 2016 film Hidden Figures, the character Al Harrison, requirements for satisfactory flying qualities of airplanes by Robert Gilruth
31.
Johnson Space Center
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The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center is the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Manned Spacecraft Center, where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was built and leased to NASA by Joseph L. Smith & Associates and it was renamed in honor of the late U. S. president and Texas native, Lyndon B. Johnson, by an act of the United States Senate on February 19,1973 and it consists of a complex of one hundred buildings constructed on 1,620 acres in the Clear Lake Area of Houston which acquired the official nickname Space City in 1967. The center is home to NASAs astronaut corps and is responsible for training astronauts from both the U. S. and its international partners. It has become known for its flight control function, identified as Mission Control during the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo–Soyuz. The Manned Spacecraft Center grew out of the Space Task Group headed by Robert Gilruth, the STG was based at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, but reported organizationally to the Goddard Space Flight Center. To meet the needs of the US human spaceflight program, plans began in 1961 to expand its staff to its own organization. This was constructed in 1962 and 1963 on land donated by the Humble Oil company through Rice University, today, JSC is one of ten major NASA field centers. The STG originally reported to the Goddard Space Flight Center organization, with a staff of 45, including eight secretaries and computers. This was expanded in 1959 by the addition of 32 Canadian engineers put out of work by the cancellation of the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow project, nineteen days earlier, he had written a memo to his yet-unnamed successor, recommending a new site be chosen. By the time President John F, in 1961, Congress held hearings and passed a $1.7 billion 1962 NASA appropriations bill which included $60 million for the new manned spaceflight laboratory. A set of requirements for the new site was drawn up and released to the Congress, in August 1961, Webb tasked Associate Director of the Ames Research Center John F. Parsons with heading a site selection team, which included Philip Miller, Wesley Hjornevik, and I. Edward Campagna, the engineer for the STG. The team visited all 23 sites between August 21 and September 7,1961, senators and Congressmen from sites in Missouri and California similarly lobbied the selection team. Following its tour, the team identified MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa as its first choice, the Houston Rice University site was second, and the Benicia Ordnance Depot in San Francisco was third. Before a decision could be made, however, the Air Force decided not to close MacDill, omitting it from consideration and moving the Rice University site to first place. ”The Executive Office and NASA made advance notifications of the award, and the public announcement of the location followed on September 19,1961. According to Texas A&M University historian Henry C, Dethloff, Although the Houston site neatly fit the criteria required for the new center, Texas undoubtedly exerted an enormous political influence on such a decision. Finally, Sam Rayburn was Speaker of the House of Representatives, the land for the new facility was 1,000 acres donated to Rice by the Humble Oil company, situated in an undeveloped area 25 miles southeast of Houston adjacent to Clear Lake near Galveston Bay
32.
Wernher von Braun
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He was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, where he was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS. In his twenties and early thirties, von Braun worked in Germanys rocket development program, following the war, von Braun worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program before his group was assimilated into NASA. In 1975, he received the National Medal of Science and he continued insisting on the human mission to Mars throughout his life. Wernher von Braun was born on 23 March 1912 in the town of Wirsitz, in the Posen Province. He was the second of three sons and he belonged to a noble family, inheriting the German title of Freiherr. His father, conservative civil servant Magnus Freiherr von Braun, served as a Minister of Agriculture in the Reich Cabinet during the Weimar Republic, Von Braun had an older brother, Sigismund, and a younger brother, also named Magnus. After Wernher von Brauns Lutheran confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope, the family moved to Berlin in 1915 where his father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. He was taken into custody by the police until his father came to collect him. Wernher von Braun was an amateur pianist who could play Beethoven. He learned to both the cello and the piano at an early age and at one time wanted to become a composer. He took lessons from the composer Paul Hindemith, the few pieces of von Braun’s youthful compositions that exist are reminiscent of Hindemith’s style. Beginning in 1925, von Braun attended a school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar. There he acquired a copy of By Rocket into Planetary Space by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, in 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog. Space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering. In 1930, he attended the Technische Hochschule Berlin, where he joined the Spaceflight Society, in spring 1932, he graduated from the Technische Hochschule Berlin, with a diploma in mechanical engineering. His early exposure to rocketry convinced him that the exploration of space would require far more applications of the current engineering technology. He also studied at ETH Zürich, although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest. In 1930, von Braun attended a presentation given by Auguste Piccard, after the talk the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him, You know, I plan on traveling to the Moon at some time
33.
Marshall Space Flight Center
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The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center is the U. S. governments civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. The largest NASA center, MSFCs first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo moon program, located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, MSFC is named in honor of General of the Army George Marshall. The center also contains the Huntsville Operations Support Center, a facility that supports ISS launch, payload, the HOSC also monitors rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station when a Marshall Center payload is on board. The largest and best-known activity was called Operation Paperclip, in August 1945,127 missile specialists led by Wernher von Braun signed work contracts with the U. S. Armys Ordnance Corps. Most of them had worked on the V-2 missile development under von Braun at Peenemünde, Von Braun and the other Germans were sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, joining the Armys newly formed Research and Development Division Sub-office. Von Braun had long had a great interest in rocketry for space science, toward this, he was allowed to use a WAC Corporal rocket as a second stage for a V-2, the combination, called Bumper, reached a record-breaking 250 miles altitude. During World War II, the production and storage of shells was conducted by three arsenals nearby to Huntsville, Alabama. After the war, these were closed, and the three areas were combined to form Redstone Arsenal, a year later, the Secretary of the Army approved the transfer of the rocket research and development activities from Fort Bliss to the new center at Redstone Arsenal. Beginning in April 1950, about 1,000 persons were involved in the transfer, at this time, R&D responsibility for guided missiles was added, and studies began on a medium-range guided missile that eventually became the Redstone rocket. Over the next decade, the development on Redstone Arsenal greatly expanded. Many small free-flight and guided rockets were developed, and work on the Redstone rocket got underway, although this rocket was primarily intended for military purposes, von Braun kept space firmly in his mind, and published a widely read article on this subject. In mid-1952, the Germans who had worked under individual contracts were converted to civil service employees. Von Braun was appointed Chief of the Guided Missile Development Division, in September 1954, von Braun proposed using the Redstone as the main booster of a multi-stage rocket for launching artificial satellites. A year later, a study for Project Orbiter was completed, detailing plans, the Armys official role in the U. S. space satellite program was delayed, however, after higher authorities elected to use the Vanguard rocket then being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. In February 1956, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was established, von Braun was the director of the Development Operations Division. One of the programs was a 1, 500-mile, single-stage missile that was started the previous year. The first Jupiter IRBM flight took place from Cape Canaveral in March 1957 with the first successful flight to full range on 31 May, Jupiter was eventually taken over by the U. S. Air Force. The ABMA developed Jupiter-C was composed of a Redstone rocket first stage, while the Jupiter C capability was such that it could have placed the fourth stage in orbit, that mission had been assigned to the NRL
34.
Huntsville, Alabama
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Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the central part of the far northern region of Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County, the city extends west into neighboring Limestone County. Huntsvilles population was 180,105 as of the 2010 census, the Huntsville Metropolitan Areas population was 417,593 in 2010 to become the 2nd largest in Alabama. Huntsville metros population reached 441,000 by 2014, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Huntsville to its Americas Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2010 list. The first settlers of the area were Muscogee-speaking people, the Chickasaw traditionally claim to have settled around 1300 after coming east across the Mississippi. The 1805 Treaty with the Chickasaws and the Cherokee Treaty of Washington of 1806 ceded native claims to the United States Government, the area was subsequently purchased by LeRoy Pope, who named the area Twickenham after the home village of his distant kinsman Alexander Pope. Twickenham was carefully planned, with streets laid out on the northeast to southwest direction based on the Big Spring. However, due to anti-British sentiment during this period, the name was changed to Huntsville to honor John Hunt, both John Hunt and LeRoy Pope were Freemasons and charter members of Helion Lodge #1, the oldest Lodge in Alabama. In 1811, Huntsville became the first incorporated town in Alabama, however, the recognized birth year of the city is 1805, the year of John Hunts arrival. The citys sesquicentennial anniversary was held in 1955, and the bicentennial was celebrated in 2005, Huntsvilles quick growth was from wealth generated by the cotton and railroad industries. Many wealthy planters moved into the area from Virginia, Georgia, in 1819, Huntsville hosted a constitutional convention in Walker Allens large cabinetmaking shop. The 44 delegates meeting there wrote a constitution for the new state of Alabama, in accordance with the new state constitution, Huntsville became Alabamas first capital when the state was admitted to the Union. This was a designation for one legislative session only, and the capital was then moved to Cahawba, then to Tuscaloosa. In 1855, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was constructed through Huntsville, Huntsville initially opposed secession from the Union in 1861, but provided many men for the Confederacys efforts. The 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment, led by Col. Egbert J. Jones of Huntsville, distinguished itself at the Battle of Manassas/Bull Run, the first major encounter of the American Civil War. The Fourth Alabama Infantry, which contained two Huntsville companies, were the first Alabama troops to fight in the war and were present when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in April 1865. Eight generals of the war were born in or near Huntsville, Huntsville was the control point for the Western Division of the Memphis &Charleston, and by controlling this railroad the Union had a direct connection to Charleston South Carolina. During the first occupation, the Union officers occupied many of the homes in the city while the other men camped on the outskirts
35.
James E. Webb
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James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as the second administrator of NASA from February 14,1961 to October 7,1968. He also dealt with the Apollo 1 fire, in 2002, a planned space telescope, originally called the Next Generation Space Telescope, was renamed the James Webb Space Telescope as a tribute to Webb. Webb was born in the hamlet of Tally Ho in Granville County and his father was superintendent of the Granville County public schools. He completed his education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a member of the Acacia Fraternity, Webb became a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, and he served as a Marine Corps pilot on active duty in 1930–32. Webb then studied law at The George Washington University Law School where he received a J. D. degree in 1936, in the same year he was admitted to the Bar of the District of Columbia. Webb began his career in public service in Washington, D. C. by serving as secretary to US Rep. Edward W. Pou of North Carolina in 1932–34. Pou was chairman of the Rules Committee and Dean of the House, with Webbs assistance, Pou was influential in pushing through the first legislation of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal during the first hundred days of Roosevelts term. In addition to his duties, Webb provided physical assistance to the aging and ailing Pou. He next served as an assistant in the office of O. Max Gardner, Gardner supported Webb in finishing his law degree. During the Air Mail scandal of 1934, the government halted the carrying of airmail by private airline companies, a group of airline executives led by the Thomas Morgan, the President of the Sperry Gyroscope Company in Brooklyn, New York, hired Gardners firm to represent them. The successful resolution resulted in the resumption of contracts to private airlines, as a result of their interactions, Morgan hired Webb as the personnel director and assistant to the President of Sperry. Between 1936 and 1944, Webb became the secretary-treasurer and later the president of Sperry. During his tenure, Sperry expanded from 800 employees to more than 33,000 and became a supplier of navigation equipment. Although he wished to re-enlist in the Marines at the start of the war and he was put in charge of a radar program for the invasion of the Japanese mainland. He had orders to leave for Japan on August 14,1945, but his orders were delayed, and the Surrender of Japan on September 2,1945 meant that he did not see combat. After World War II, Webb returned to Washington and served as assistant to O. Webb was recommended for the appointment to Truman by Gardner. During the appointment announcement, Truman forgot Webbs name and had to look it up, because of Webbs association with the Treasury Department, his appointment was seen as subordinating the BoB to the Treasury
36.
N1 (rocket)
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The N1 was a super heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to deliver payloads beyond low Earth orbit, acting as the Soviet counterpart to the US Saturn V. It was designed with crewed extra-orbital travel in mind, development work started on the N1 in 1959. Its first stage is the most powerful rocket stage ever built, the N1-L3 version was developed to compete with the United States Apollo-Saturn V to land a man on the Moon, using the same lunar orbit rendezvous method. The basic N1 launch vehicle had three stages, which was to carry the L3 lunar payload into low Earth orbit with two cosmonauts, the Apollo spacecraft was able to carry three astronauts, and did not require the extra two rocket stages. N1-L3 was underfunded and rushed, starting development in October 1965, the project was badly derailed by the death of its chief designer Sergei Korolev in 1966. The N1 program was suspended in 1974, and in 1976 was officially canceled. Along with the rest of the Soviet manned lunar programs, the N1 was kept secret almost until the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, development began under the direction of Sergei Korolev at his OKB-1 Design Bureau. The original design proposed a 50-metric-ton payload intended as a launcher for military space stations, at this point the N-series was strictly a paper project. In December 1959, a meeting was called all of the chief designers. Korolev presented the N-series along with a more modest series of upgrades to the R-7. Vladimir Chelomei, Korolevs rival, presented his Universal Rocket series, in the end the military planners selected Chelomeis UR-100 as the new light ICBM, and Yangels R-36 for the heavy role. They saw no need for any of the larger dedicated launchers, in March 1961, during a meeting at Baikonur, designers discussed the N1 design, along with a competing Glushko design, the R-20. In June, Korolev was given an amount of funding for N1 development between 1961 and 1963. In May 1961 a government report, On Reconsideration of the Plans for Space Vehicles in the Direction of Defense Purposes, set the first test launch of the N1 rocket for 1965. Several launches would be used to build up a complete package, one for the Soyuz, another for the lunar lander. This approach makes the least demands on the vehicle, as the payload mass is reduced for any one launch. This is at the expense of requiring a rapid rate to ensure that the modules are built up before running out of consumables while waiting on-orbit. Even using this profile the lunar boosters and fuel were too large for any existing Soviet launcher and this formula is hypergolic, and was widely used in Glushkos existing engine designs used on various ICBMs
37.
LK (spacecraft)
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The LK was a piloted lunar lander developed in the 1960s as a part of the Soviet attempts at human exploration of the Moon. Its role was analogous to the American Apollo Lunar Module, several LK articles were flown without crew in Earth orbit, but no LK ever reached the Moon. The development of the N1 launch vehicle required for the Moon flight suffered setbacks, as a result, both the N1 and the LK programs were cancelled without any further development. Sergei Korolev, the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the 1950s and 1960s, the Lunar expedition spacecraft L3 consist of LOK Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl Command Ship and LK Lander. L3 would carry a two-man crew atop a single three-stage superheavy N-1 booster, a fourth stage, the Blok G, would push toward the Moon the L3 with Blok D as fifth stage. The Block D engine would also slow the L3 into lunar orbit, following the coast to the Moon, one cosmonaut would spacewalk from the LOK to the LK lander and enter it. He would then separate the Block D stage and the LK from the LOK before dropping toward the Moon using the Blok D engine. An earlier unmanned probe of the Luna programme, a Lunokhod would be used to select a suitable area, a backup LK would then be launched to the landing site. The third step would see a manned LK landing with a single cosmonaut, most likely, the cosmonaut would plant the Soviet flag on the Moon, collect soil samples, take photographs, and deploy a few small scientific packages. Long duration missions, lunar rovers, and other activities performed on the late Apollo landings were not possible at all, after a day on the lunar surface the LKs engine would fire again, using its landing leg structure as a launch pad. To save weight, the used for landing would also blast the LK back to lunar orbit for an automated docking with the LOK. The cosmonaut would spacewalk back to the LOK carrying the Moon rock samples. After this, the LOK would fire its rocket for the return to Earth, due to weight restrictions, the docking interface was designed to be as simple as possible, with a strictly mechanical interlock and no electrical or fluid connections. Docking and undocking were only possible a single time, the LK spacecraft can be subdivided into the Lunar Landing Aggregate and the Lunar Ascent Vehicle. Propulsion, both for landing and lifting off the Moon was based on the Block E propulsion system, the Information Display System version was called Luch. The first test was on November 24,1970, the second on December 2,1970, the third on February 26,1971, all four LKs were launched with the Soyuz-L rocket. The first flight imitated the planned working cycle of the Blok E rocket block, the third and fourth flights were intended to test the LKs behavior under several flight anomalies. All flights went well, and the LK was considered ready for manned flight, the success of Project Apollo in putting American astronauts on the Moon in 1969 meant that the United States won the Moon race, although plans were being drawn right up until the early 1970s
38.
Soyuz 7K-LOK
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The Soyuz 7K-LOK, or simply LOK was a Soviet manned spacecraft designed to launch men from Earth to circle the moon and developed in parallel to the 7K-L1. The LOK would carry two cosmonauts into orbit around the Moon, acting as mother spacecraft for the LK Lander and it was part of the N1-L3 programme which also included the LK lander and the N1 rocket. Like the 7K-OK model, the 7K-LOK was divided into three sections, an ellipsoid Orbital Module, the headlight-shaped Descent Module, and a cylindrical equipment module. Another change to the 7K-LOK was the elimination of the solar panels used on the 7K-OK, another feature, a cupola located on the Orbital Module, allowed the cosmonaut in the 7K-LOK to perform the docking procedure with the LK Lander after lunar liftoff. The information display systems on the LOK were different from those of the Soyuz-7K, the Descent Module was equipped with the Uran control panel and the Orbital Module featured the Orion approach control panel. Only three unmanned 7K-LOKs were flown in the lifespan of the failed Soviet lunar program. Both spacecraft were pulled and saved by the escape system when those boosters failed. The N1-L3 program was cancelled in May 1974 and the Soviets decided to concentrate on the development of space stations, LOK spacecraft article Soyuz 7K-LOK article
39.
Constellation program
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The Constellation Program was a manned spaceflight program developed by NASA, the space agency of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were completion of the International Space Station, the programs logo reflected the three stages of the program, the Earth, the Moon, and finally Mars—while the Mars goal also found expression in the name given to the programs booster rockets, Ares. Constellation began in response to the laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration under NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe. Work began on this revised Constellation Program, to send astronauts first to the International Space Station, then to the Moon,2011 fiscal year budget, but later announced changes to the proposal in a major space policy speech at Kennedy Space Center on April 15,2010. Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 on October 11, in 2011, NASA announced that it had adopted the design of its new Space Launch System. One of the goals of Constellation was the development of spacecraft. NASA had already begun designing two boosters, the Ares I and Ares V, when the program was created, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle was designed for the Constellation program as a crew compartment for use in low Earth orbit. Lockheed Martin was selected as the contractor for the Orion project on August 31,2006. NASA initially planned to develop different Orion capsules tailored for specific missions, the Block I Orion was to be used for International Space Station missions and other Earth orbit missions, while the Block II and III variants were designed for deep-space exploration. The Orion Crew Module is designed to be reusable for up to ten flights, Altair was designed to be the main transport vehicle for astronauts on lunar missions. It was to stand 32 feet tall and span 49 feet wide from tip to tip of the landing gear, unlike the Lunar Module, Altair was designed to land in the lunar polar regions favored by NASA for future lunar base construction. Altair, like the Lunar Module, was not designed to be reusable, the Altair descent stage was to be powered by four RL-10 rocket engines, which are also those used in the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket. Alternately, there was a possibility that the original plan of using LOX/CH4–fueled engines on board the Block II Orion CSM. NASA planned to use two separate boosters for the Constellation Program missions – the Ares I for crew and the Ares V for cargo. This would have allowed the two vehicles to be optimized for their respective missions, and allowed a much higher total lift for the Ares V without being cost-prohibitive. The Constellation Program thus combined the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method adopted by the Apollo programs lunar missions with the Earth Orbit Rendezvous method which had also been considered, the name Ares was chosen for the boosters as a reference to the projects goal of landing on Mars. The numbers I and V were chosen to pay homage to the Saturn rockets of the 1960s, the Orion spacecraft would have been launched into a low Earth orbit by the Ares I rocket, developed by Alliant Techsystems, Rocketdyne, and Boeing. NASA selected the Ares designs for their anticipated overall safety, reliability, as of May 2010, the program got as far as launching the first Ares I-X first-stage flight on October 28,2009 and testing the Orion launch abort system before its cancellation
40.
Chang'e 5
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Change 5 is an unmanned Chinese lunar exploration mission currently under development, which is expected to land on the Moon by 2017. Change 5 will be Chinas first sample return mission, aiming to return at least 2 kilograms of lunar soil, like its predecessors, the spacecraft is named after the Chinese moon goddess Change. The probe will be launched by Long March 5 rocket at the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island, after making a soft landing on the Moon, the lander will dig and collect a lunar sample from up to 2 meters below the surface. Unlike earlier Soviet missions, the mission will make an automatic rendezvous, Change 5-T1 is an experimental unmanned lunar mission that was launched on 23 October 2014 to conduct atmospheric re-entry tests on the capsule design planned to be used in the Change 5 mission
41.
Gemini 6A
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Gemini 6A was a 1965 manned United States spaceflight in NASAs Gemini program. The mission achieved the first manned rendezvous with another spacecraft, its sister Gemini 7, Gemini 6A was the fifth manned Gemini flight, the 13th manned American flight, and the 21st manned spaceflight of all time. It was to land in the western Atlantic Ocean south of Bermuda, the mission was to include four dockings with the Agena Target Vehicle. The first docking was scheduled for five hours and forty minutes into the mission, the second was scheduled for seven hours and forty-five minutes, the third at nine hours and forty minutes, and the fourth and final docking at ten hours and five minutes into the mission. The final undocking would take place at 18 hours and 20 minutes into the mission, at 23 hours and 55 minutes into the mission, while the spacecraft passed over White Sands, New Mexico, the crew was to attempt to observe a laser beam originating from the ground. The retrorockets were scheduled to be fired at 46 hours and 10 minutes into the mission over the Pacific Ocean on the 29th orbit. Original mission plans also included the first live coverage of the recovery of a US spacecraft at sea from the recovery ship. The Wasp was fitted with ground station equipment by ITT to relay live television, on October 25,1965, Schirra and Stafford boarded their Gemini 6 craft to prepare for launch. Fifteen minutes later, the unmanned Atlas-Agena target vehicle was launched, after a successful burn of the Atlas booster, the Agenas secondary engines fired to separate it from the Atlas. But immediately after the Agenas primary engine fired at the six minute mark in its flight, a catastrophic failure apparently caused the vehicle to explode, as Range Safety was tracking multiple pieces of debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean. After 50 minutes, the Gemini launch was canceled, after reviewing the situation, NASA decided to launch an alternate Gemini 6A mission, eight days after the launch of Gemini 7, which was scheduled as a 14-day ultra long duration mission in December. Gemini 6A would perform the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit, using 7 as the target, though they would not dock, the first attempt to launch the 6A mission was on December 12,1965 at 9,54 a. m. All went well right up to ignition, the engines ignited, however, Schirra did not feel any movement and knew that the booster had not lifted, so he decided to not abort. In addition, the interior had been soaking in pure oxygen for hours. You remember the tragic fire we had at the Cape, jesus, with that fire going off and that, it would have burned the suits. That was another thing, NASA never tested it under the conditions that they would have had if they would have had to eject. They did have some tests at China Lake where they had a simulated mock-up of Gemini capsule and they didnt have it filled full of oxygen in the sled test they had. John Young also recalled witnessing a test of the seats where the test dummy was launched right through the capsule hatch
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Gemini 8
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Gemini 8 was the sixth manned spaceflight in NASAs Gemini program. The crew was returned to Earth safely, the only other time this happened was on the flight of Apollo 13. It was the twelfth manned American flight and the manned spaceflight of all time. Command pilot Neil Armstrongs flight marked the time a U. S. civilian flew into space. Armstrong had resigned his commission in the United States Naval Reserve in 1960, the Soviet Union had launched the first civilian, Valentina Tereshkova, aboard Vostok 6 on June 16,1963. This would become the crew on Gemini 11. This was to be the first space docking in history, a total of four separate dockings were planned. Then he was to back to the Gemini and test a minimum-reaction power tool by loosening and tightening bolts on a work panel. During the EVA, after Armstrong undocked from the Agena, Scott was to don and this was a backpack with a self-contained oxygen supply, extra Freon propellant for his Hand Held Maneuvering Unit, and a 75-foot extension to his tether. He would practice several maneuvers in formation with the Gemini and Agena vehicles (separated at distances up to 60 feet, Scott never got to perform this EVA, due to the aborting of the flight because of a critical in-flight emergency which occurred shortly after docking. The flight also carried an additional three scientific, four technological, and one medical experiment and this time, everything worked perfectly, the Agena put itself into a 298 kilometer circular orbit and oriented itself to the correct attitude for the docking. The Gemini spacecraft itself was launched into a 160 by 272 kilometer orbit by a modified Titan II on March 16,1966, Gemini 8s launch was nominal and no significant anomalies occurred with either the Titan II or the spacecraft. The second adjustment was made near apogee of the second orbit, the third adjustment was made over the Pacific Ocean, a southward orbital plane change, made with an 59 feet per second sideways thruster burn. When they were over Mexico, Jim Lovell, the Houston capsule communicator, told them they needed one last correction, the rendezvous radar acquired the Agena Target Vehicle at a distance of 179 nautical miles. At 3 hours,48 minutes and 10 seconds into the mission they performed another burn that put them in a circular orbit 15 nautical miles below the Agena. They first sighted it when they were 76 nautical miles away, after several small burns they were 151 feet away and with no relative velocity. After 30 minutes of visually inspecting the Agena to make sure that it had not been damaged by the launch, Armstrong started to move towards the Agena at 3.15 inches per second. In a matter of minutes, the Agenas docking latches clicked, yes, its really a smoothie, Scott radioed to the ground
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Gemini 9A
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Gemini 9A was a 1966 manned spaceflight in NASAs Gemini program. It was the 7th manned Gemini flight, the 13th manned American flight, the mission was flown June 3–6,1966 by backup command pilot Thomas P. Stafford and pilot Eugene Cernan. Cernan performed an extravehicular activity, during which he was planned to demonstrate free flight in a self-contained rocket pack. He was unable to accomplish due to stress, fatigue. On February 28,1966, See and Bassett were flying from Texas to inspect the Gemini 9 spacecraft at the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, Missouri. As a consequence, the crew was promoted to prime crew. This would later become the crew on Gemini 12 The promotion of Stafford. Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were originally the backup crew for Gemini 10 and this is significant as the standard crew rotation meant that a spot on the backup crew of Gemini 10 would have placed Buzz Aldrin on the prime crew of the non-existent mission after Gemini 12. Mass,3,750 kilograms Perigee,158.8 kilometers at launch Apogee,266.9 kilometers at launch Inclination,28. 91° Period,88, accomplishment was not possible because of a launch preparation error on the target vehicle. A second objective was a planned extravehicular activity, or space walk, use of the AMU was not achieved due to Cernan experiencing high cardiac stress, overheating, and fatigue during EVA. Gemini 9s Agena Target Vehicle was launched on May 17,1966 on an Atlas launch vehicle, the Atlas malfunctioned in flight, and the ATV failed to reach orbit. This forced the cancellation of the Gemini 9 launch scheduled for later that morning, the Augmented Target Docking Adapter had been designed for use as a contingency for the ATV, which had failed during the original Gemini 6 launch. Built by Gemini spacecraft manufacturer McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the ATDA replaced the Agena rocket with the control section of a Gemini. It was built using already tested equipment, and successfully launched on June 1,1966 into a 298-kilometer orbit using the Atlas SLV-3 rocket, after launch, telemetry indicated that the launch shroud had failed to open properly. The first launch attempt was scheduled to occur shortly after the ATDA launch, but at T-3 minutes, the ground computers lost contact with the Gemini computers for an unknown reason, and the 40 second launch window opened and closed without launch. This earned Tom Stafford the title of Mayor of Pad 19, the second launch attempt on June 3 went perfectly, with the spacecraft entering into orbit. With this launch, Stafford could say that he had been strapped into a six times for only 2 launches. Stafford made the first thruster burn 49 minutes after launch, to add 22.7 meters per second to their speed, an hour and 35 minutes later, Stafford corrected phase, height, and out-of-plane errors by pointing the spacecraft 40° down, and 3° to the left
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Gemini 10
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Gemini 10 was a 1966 manned spaceflight in NASAs Gemini program. It was the 8th manned Gemini flight, the 16th manned American flight, buzz Aldrin L. Gordon Cooper, Jr. Mass,8,295 pounds Perigee,86.3 nautical miles Apogee,145.2 nautical miles Inclination,28. 87° Period,88. After docking with their Agena booster in low orbit, Young, after leaving the first Agena, they then met with the dead, drifting Agena left over from the aborted Gemini 8 flight—thus executing the programs first double rendezvous. With no electricity on board the second Agena, the rendezvous was accomplished with eyes only—no radar, after the rendezvous, Collins spacewalked over to the dormant Agena at the end of a 50-foot tether, making Collins the first person to meet another spacecraft in orbit. Gemini 10 was designed to achieve the objectives planned for the last two missions—rendezvous, docking and EVA, as well as this it was also hoped to dock with the Agena Target Vehicle from the Gemini 8 mission. This Agenas battery power had failed many months earlier and this would demonstrate the ability to rendezvous with a passive object and it would be also the first mission to fire the Agenas own rocket, allowing them to reach higher orbits. The Agena launched perfectly for the time, after problems had occurred with the targets for Gemini 6 and 9. Gemini 10 followed 100 minutes later and entered a 86. 3-by-145. 2-nautical-mile orbit and they were 970 nautical miles behind the Agena. Two anomalous events occurred during the launch, at liftoff, a propellant fill umbilical became snared with its release lanyard. It ripped out of the LC-19 service tower and remained attached to the stage during ascent. Tracking camera footage showed that the first stage oxidizer tank dome ruptured after staging. The telemetry package on the first stage had been disabled at staging, film review of Titan II ICBM launches found at least seven other instances of post-staging tank rupture, most likely caused by flying debris, second stage engine exhaust, or structural bending. NASA finally decided that this phenomenon did not pose any safety risk to the astronauts, Collins discovered that he was unable to use the sextant for navigation as it did not seem to work as expected. At first he mistook airglow as the horizon when trying to make some fixes on stars. Then the image didnt seem right and he tried another instrument that they had on board but this was not practical to use as it had a very small field of view. They fortunately had a backup in the form of the computers on the ground and they made their first burn to put them into a 143-by-147-nautical-mile orbit. However Young didnt realize that during the burn, he had the spacecraft turned slightly. This meant two extra burns were necessary, and by the time they had docked with the Agena, 60% of their fuel had been consumed
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Gemini 11
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Gemini 11 ) was the ninth manned spaceflight mission of NASAs Project Gemini, which flew from September 12 to 15,1966. It was the 17th manned American flight and the 25th spaceflight to that time, astronauts Charles Pete Conrad, Jr. and Richard F. Gordon Jr. Gordon also performed two extra-vehicular activities for a total of 2 hours and 41 minutes. Williams, Jr. John W. Young Alan L. Bean Mass,8,374 pounds Highest orbit and this would simulate a Lunar Module rendezvous with the Command/Service Module after a lunar landing. Use the Agena rocket engine to put the craft in a high-apogee elliptical orbit. Demonstrate passive attitude stabilization of the two connected by a tether, and create artificial gravity by spinning the combined craft. Perform a computer-controlled atmospheric reentry to a precision splashdown point, Gemini 11 used the rocket on its Agena target vehicle to raise its apogee to 850 miles, the highest Earth orbit ever reached by a manned spacecraft. The perigee was 179 miles, and maximum velocity was 17,967 miles per hour, the apogee record stands as of March 2016, even though men have achieved greater distances from Earth by flying to the Moon in the Apollo program. The maximum operational altitude of the Space Shuttle was lower, at 600 miles, the crew docked and undocked four times, and still had sufficient Gemini maneuvering fuel for an unplanned fifth rendezvous. They did not remain in the orbit, but changed it back to a near-circular one at 184 miles. Gordons first EVA, planned to last for two hours, involved fastening a 100-foot tether, stored in the Agenas docking collar, to the Geminis docking bar for the passive stabilization experiment, the passive stabilization experiment proved to be a bit troublesome. Conrad and Gordon separated the craft in a position, but found that the tether would not be kept taut simply by the Earths gravity gradient. However, they were able to generate an amount of artificial gravity, about 0.00015 g. Gordon successfully performed a second EVA standing up with his head and shoulders out of the hatch to photograph the Earth, clouds and this was not tiring, and lasted more than two hours. Radiation and Zero G Effects on Blood and Neurospora, To determine if weightlessness enhances the effects of radiation on human blood cells. Synoptic Terrain Photography, To obtain high-quality photographs for research in geology, geophysics, geography, oceanography, synoptic Weather Photography, To obtain selective high quality photographs of clouds to study the fine structure of the Earths weather system. Nuclear Emulsion, To study the radiation incident on the Earths atmosphere, to obtain detailed chemical composition of the heavy primary nuclei. Airglow Horizon Photography, To measure by direct photography the heights at which atomic oxygen, dim-Light Photography and Orthicon, To obtain photographs of various faint and diffuse astronomical phenomena. The Gemini 11 mission was supported by 9,054 United States Department of Defense personnel,73 aircraft and 13 ships, since Conrad and Gordon were both members of the US Navy, the embroidered mission patch was designed in Navy colors, blue and gold
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Gemini 12
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Gemini 12 was a 1966 manned spaceflight in NASAs Project Gemini. It was the 10th and final manned Gemini flight, the 18th manned American spaceflight, commanded by Gemini VII veteran James A. Lovell, the flight featured three periods of extravehicular activity by rookie Edwin Buzz Aldrin, lasting a total of 5 hours and 30 minutes. It also achieved the fifth rendezvous and fourth docking with an Agena target vehicle, Gemini XII marked a successful conclusion of the Gemini program, achieving the last of its goals by successfully demonstrating that astronauts can effectively work outside of spacecraft. This was instrumental in paving the way for the Apollo program to achieve its goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Stuart A. Roosa Charles Conrad Jr. William A. Anders Mass,3,762.1 kilograms Perigee,160.8 kilometers Apogee,270.6 kilometers Inclination,28. 87° Period,88. All launch vehicle systems performed nominally during powered flight, but at staging there was a recurrence of the first stage oxidizer tank rupture first seen on Gemini 10s launch. On Gemini 12, the tank appeared to have also ruptured as a white cloud was seen emitting from the spent stage along with the orange nitrogen tetroxide. Another episode of Green Man also occurred at SECO, referring to pitch gyrations caused by pressure buildup in the second stage protective skirt, at the completion of the previous Gemini flight, the program still had not demonstrated that an astronaut could work easily and efficiently outside the spacecraft. Two more stand-up EVAs also went smoothly, as did the by-now routine rendezvous and docking with an Agena which was done using the onboard computer. The climb to an orbit, however, was canceled because of a problem with the Agena booster. During orbital injection, the GATV engine experienced a drop in turbopump speed lasting about 2.5 seconds, after this, pump performance returned to normal. Telemetry data indicated erratic pump speeds, but engine performance did not reflect this, ground controllers decided not to risk the planned orbital boost maneuver since the exact reason for the pump slowdown was unclear. Following Gemini 12s reentry and during the GATVs 63rd orbit, they attempted to fire the propulsion system and it was suspected that a turbopump bearing failure caused the anomalous conditions during orbital injection, followed by heating and melting of pump components. The inability of ground controllers to start the engine during the 63rd orbit was possibly due to melted or loose debris blocking the fuel valve, the telemetry data falsely reporting erratic pump speed was concluded to be debris being knocked around and affecting the data probes. Many documentaries afterward largely credit the spacewalk innovations, including the underwater training, by May 1966, delays in making Apollo ready for flight just by itself, and the extra time needed to incorporate compatibility with the Gemini, made that impractical. This became moot when slippage in readiness of the Apollo spacecraft caused the last-quarter 1966 target date to be missed, two micrometeorite collection experiments, as well as three space phenomena photography experiments, were not fully completed. The capsule was controlled on reentry by computer and splashed down 4.8 kilometers from its target, the crew were taken aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. The Gemini 12 mission was supported by the following U. S. Department of Defense resources,9,775 personnel,65 aircraft and 12 ships, postflight medical examination disclosed no unusual conditions in either astronaut
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Apollo 9
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Apollo 9 was the third manned mission in the United States Apollo space program and the first flight of the Command/Service Module with the Lunar Module. The mission was the manned launch of a Saturn V rocket. The mission proved the LM worthy of manned spaceflight, further tests on the Apollo 10 mission would prepare the LM for its ultimate goal, landing on the Moon. They returned to Earth on March 13,1969, * Williams was killed in October 1967 when the T-38 he was flying crashed near Tallahassee, and was replaced with Alan L. Bean. This was to be followed by a second block I flight, AS-205, to be crewed by Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham. The third manned mission, designated AS-207/208, was planned to fly the block II Command Module, however, delays in the block I CSM development pushed AS-204 into 1967. On January 26,1967, they were training for flight, expected to occur in late 1967, in the first block II Command Module 101 at the North American plant in Downey. As it turned out, a 1967 launch of AS-205/208 would have been impossible even absent the Apollo 1 accident, NASA was able to use the 18-month hiatus to catch up with development and unmanned testing of the LM and the Saturn V launch vehicle. This would be followed by a higher Earth orbit flight, to be crewed by Frank Borman, Michael Collins, Slayton asked McDivitt and Borman which mission they preferred to fly, McDivitt wanted to fly the LM, while Borman volunteered for the pioneering lunar flight. Therefore, Slayton swapped the crews, and McDivitts crew flew Apollo 9, the crew swap also affected who would be the first crew to land on the Moon, when the crews for Apollo 8 and 9 were swapped, their backup crews were also swapped. It was also the first space docking of two vehicles with a crew transfer between them. Apollo 9 gave proof that the Apollo spacecraft were up to this critical task, for this and all subsequent Apollo flights, the crews were allowed to name their own spacecraft. The gangly LM was named Spider, and the CSM was labeled Gumdrop because of the Command Modules shape and these names were required as radio call signs when the vehicles flew independently. McDivitt and Schweickart later test-flew the LM, and practiced separation and they flew the LM up to 111 miles from Gumdrop, using the engine on the descent stage to propel them originally, before jettisoning it and using the ascent stage to return. This test flight represented the first flight of a spacecraft that was not equipped to reenter the Earths atmosphere. The splashdown point was 23°15′N, 67°56′W,160 nautical miles east of the Bahamas, Apollo 9 was the last spacecraft to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. The Command Module was displayed at the Michigan Space and Science Center, Jackson, Michigan, in May 2004, it was moved to the San Diego Aerospace Museum. The LM ascent stage orbit decayed on October 23,1981, the S-IVB stage J-2 engine was restarted after Lunar Module extraction and propelled the stage into solar orbit by burning to depletion
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Apollo 10
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Apollo 10 was the fourth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, and the second to orbit the Moon. Launched on May 18,1969, it was the F mission, the Lunar Module followed a descent orbit to within 8.4 nautical miles of the lunar surface, at the point where powered descent for landing would normally begin. Its success enabled the first landing to be attempted on the Apollo 11 mission two months later. According to the 2002 Guinness World Records, Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a vehicle,39,897 km/h on May 26,1969. The missions call signs included the names of the Peanuts characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz also drew some mission-related artwork for NASA. Charles M. Duke, Jr. Joseph H. Engle James B. Irwin Jack R. Thomas P. Stafford had flown on Gemini 6 and Gemini 9, John W. Young had flown on Gemini 3 and Gemini 10, and Eugene A. Cernan had flown with Stafford on Gemini 9. In addition, Apollo 10 was the only Saturn V flight from Launch Complex 39B, vehicle on the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project. It was on this flight that John Young became the first human to fly solo around the Moon, the Apollo 10 crew are also the humans who have traveled the farthest away from home, some 408,950 kilometers from their homes and families in Houston. The Apollo 10 crew reached the farthest point in their orbit around the far side of the Moon at about the same time Earths rotation put Houston nearly a full Earth diameter away. By the normal rotation in place during Apollo, the crew would have been scheduled to fly on Apollo 13. However, Alan Shepard was given the Apollo 13 command slot instead, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr. Commander of the Apollo 10 backup crew, was enraged and resigned from NASA. Later, Shepards crew was forced to switch places with Jim Lovells tentative Apollo 14 crew, eisele, despite his issues with management, was always intended for future assignment to the Apollo Applications Program and not a lunar mission. This dress rehearsal for a Moon landing brought the Apollo Lunar Module to 8.4 nautical miles from the lunar surface, at the point where powered descent would begin on the actual landing. Practicing this approach orbit would refine knowledge of the gravitational field needed to calibrate the powered descent guidance system to within 1 nautical mile needed for a landing. Earth-based observations, unmanned spacecraft, and Apollo 8 had respectively allowed calibration to within 200 nautical miles,20 nautical miles, the lowest measured point in the trajectory was 47,400 feet above the lunar surface at 21,29,43 UTC. Apollo 10 was the first mission to carry a television camera inside the spacecraft. After reaching lunar orbit three days later, Young remained in the Command Module Charlie Brown while Stafford and Cernan entered the LM Snoopy and they surveyed the landing site in the Sea of Tranquility, then separated the descent stage and fired the ascent engine to return to Charlie Brown
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
