An Apollo spacecraft rides the engine of its Saturn S-IV stage accelerating to over 24,000 miles per hour 38,624 km h to break free of Earth’s gravity The Apollo spaceships are the only human-carrying craft to travel to another world
INTRODUCTION For centuries humans gazed up at the Moon and wondered What would it be like to visit Low on the horizon our one and only natural satellite seems magnified and close enough to touch But it lies a far-flung average of 238,855 miles 384,400 km away By the mid 1960s spaceflight technology managed to bridge that immense gap with orbiting and landing probes It would take superpower rivalry the most powerful rocket ever made and a group of intrepid heroes ready to risk it all to finally get humans on the Moon Apollo 8’s 1968 Moon-orbiting mission was the first time humans had been close to its surface The crew scouted for sites for the following year’s landing
MOON DREAMS By 1961 the first object first animal and first human into orbit had all been sent by the Soviet Union National pride led US leaders to up the stakes and bid to be first to the Moon MOONSTRUCK On May 5 1961 Alan Shepard took a 15 minute sub-orbital hop in his Mercury capsule He became the world’s second man into space and the US’s first astronaut Five months earlier US President John F Kennedy had been elected partly on a promise of delivering American superiority over the Soviets in space exploration A US Moon mission Apollo was penciled in to follow the Mercury program But little had been done Kennedy believed the US would catch up and overtake the Soviets given enough time He recognized that Apollo was ambitious enough to fit the bill All we knew of the Moon was through telescope observations like this map from 1886 The rotation of the Moon is synchronized with Earth’s rotation meaning the far side is never visible Jules Verne’s 1865 science fantasy novel From the Earth to the Moon imagined astronauts flying to the Moon in a projectile fired from a huge cannon The idea of landing on another world seemed fantastical in the 1950s the stuff of science fiction not technological fact Every stage from launch rockets to landing vehicles would be invented from scratch JOHN GLENN was the first American to ORBIT EARTH on February 20 1962 Kennedy addressed Congress on May 25 1961 He stated his administration’s goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of 1969 Kennedy would not live to see it happen but his bold commitment underpinned the whole Apollo project 06
No single space project in this period will be more impressive or more important for the long-range exploration of space President John F Kennedy The Soviet Luna 1 probe missed the Moon But it became the first spacecraft to achieve a heliocentric orbit one around the Sun 1 4 5 6 2 3 LUNA 3 1 CAMERA WINDOW 2 RADIO ANTENNA 3 ION TRAP Captured information about particles in space 4 SOLAR BATTERIES Photo-voltaic cells and electrical storage 5 NITROGEN MICROJETS For correcting position 6 RIBBON ANTENNA Luna 3 captured the first-ever image of the Moon’s far side It revealed a heavily cratered mountainous surface in contrast to the much flatter near side visible from Earth 07 LUNAR PIONEERS The Soviets were also aiming at the Moon with Moon probes On September 14 1959 they scored a hit when Luna 2impacted on the surface scattering small metallic pennants inscribed with the Soviet coat of arms One month later Luna 3swung around the Moon carrying a state-of-the-art camera and a fax machine-like scanner As the camera passed over the sunlit far side a light cell triggered the shutter The film developed automatically was scanned and transmitted line by line when Luna 3came in Pioneer 4 the fifth US attempt to probe the Moon failed but it became the first US object to escape Earth’s gravity as it shot into space view of Earth It solved the first lunar mystery what was on the far side of the Moon
