With the beginning of Project Mercury, NASA initiated efforts to stress the new program was more than hardware. Rockets and spacecraft had been launching from Cape Canaveral for the better part of a decade. The new flight safety emphasis focused on missions including people. The purpose was simple, but crucial. Everyone involved in human spaceflight plays a role in flight safety and mission success.
n the summer of 1966, America’s space program raced forward with Gemini flights in Earth orbit while new facilities were built to meet President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon. During that time, NASA provided an opportunity to view work going on inside the gates of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. In years to come, the visitor complex became one of the premier attractions in Florida.
“That’s the most gorgeous sight I believe I have ever seen,” said Apollo 16 lunar module pilot Charlie Duke. He was looking at a 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket on the launch pad the day before it rocketed him the Moon. Duke, along with veteran astronaut John Young and fellow rookie Ken Mattingly, piloted NASA’s fifth lunar landing mission in April 1972 – 50 years ago.
Apollo 14 launched 50 years ago, on Jan. 31, 1971. “It’s been a long way, but we’re here,” said Alan Shepard as he stepped from the lunar module onto the Moon’s Fra Mauro highlands. It was more than a 240,000-mile trip – it was a hard-fought return to flight for NASA’s Apollo Program and America’s first person in space.
“Apollo 13” set out to chronicle NASA’s dramatic third mission to land on the lunar surface. It was based on Jim Lovell’s best-selling book, “Lost Moon.” On the big screen, what happened in 1970 is pretty much what you get.
In the moments following Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell’s report, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” things happened fast. Lovell and his crewmates, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, worked with the team in Mission Control to sort out the issues facing the mission. But, key members of that effort believe they also were aided by a Higher Power.
What was to have been America’s third lunar landing in April 1970, became a struggle to safely return the crew after an oxygen tank explosion crippled the crew’s spacecraft. During a reunion of key players involved in the Apollo 13 mission, they recalled what has been termed “NASA’s finest hour.”
In an address to Congress in 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to “land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth” before the end of the decade. With the flight of Apollo 12, 50 years ago, NASA achieved that goal a second time.
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.