Project Gemini is often referred to as the “bridge to the Moon.” It spanned the period between Project Mercury, America’s first efforts to determine if humans could survive in space, and the Apollo lunar landing flights. Looking back across a half-century, Gemini proved to be a bridge to the future.
The first elements of the International Space Station now have been in orbit for more than 20 years. Assembly of the largest spacecraft ever built was a global, cooperative effort and began with the STS-88 space shuttle mission in December 1998.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft continues to pass through the outer edges of the solar system. After a decade-long and more than 3.6 billion mile trip to Pluto, the probe is providing the first close up observations of of the tiny planet and the most distant objects in the solar system.
New Horizons beamed back the first-ever, close-up images and scientific observations of distant Pluto, its system of large and small moons, as well as the Kuiper Belt. A region of the solar system beyond the planets, the Kuiper Belt consists mainly of small planetary bodies.
NASA recently marked the 50th anniversary of Apollo 10, the mission that served as the “dress rehearsal” for the first lunar landing two months later. The crew descended to within 47,000 feet of the Moon ensuring all was working as designed prior to making the actual touchdown.
After the Apollo command/service module was tested successfully in Earth orbit and on a trip to the Moon, NASA prepared for the next step, the first piloted flight test of the spacecraft designed to land on the lunar surface.
On Dec. 21, 1968, NASA’s Mission Control gave the crew of Apollo 8 approval for TLI — trans-lunar injection — permission to become the first humans to leave Earth orbit. Their destination, 234,000 miles away, was the Moon.
On Oct. 11, 1968, three American astronauts launched to Earth orbit aboard Apollo 7. It was the first piloted mission of the spacecraft designed to meet President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to land on the lunar surface.
The year 1967 began with the tragic loss of the Apollo 1 crew, but ended with the successful launch of the first Saturn V rocket. NASA hoped to make it two successes in a row with the first unmanned flight of the lunar module, or LM, the spacecraft designed to land Americans on the Moon before the end of the decade.
A small group of NASA engineers had an idea called, “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.” A 1961 letter to NASA’s associate administrator proposed separate vehicles, one to land on the lunar surface while another circled the Moon.