As soon as they entered lunar orbit, it took three days for their spacecraft to slow enough to be captured by lunar gravity and for astronauts to unbolt from CSM before making their initial moonwalks. On July 21, 1969, commander Neil Armstrong and LM pilot Buzz Aldrin made history when they set foot on the…
Project Apollo was NASA’s second major effort to reach the Moon. Its primary objective was to land an astronaut crewed on its surface. Before that could happen, several key advances had to be made first – and Gemini provided training for these advancements, including showing astronauts could endure long space flights. Apollo 1 Apollo 1,…
Apollo 8 was the inaugural human mission to leave Earth’s orbit and travel around the Moon, under Gemini veteran Frank Borman’s command and crewed by Jim Lovell (Command Module Pilot) and William Anders (Lunar Module Pilot). They became the first astronauts ever to see Earthrise phenomenon first-hand and take photos. 1. It was the first…
Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969, in front of millions of viewers watching it unfold live via television. As soon as they arrived back on Earth on July 24th, the astronauts were received as heroes. They enjoyed dinner with President Nixon, participated in a parade…
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee perished when the command module caught fire, due to inhalation of toxic smoke that led them to asphyxiate themselves and asphyxiate from asphyxiation. At the time of the fire, there was wall-to-wall Velcro inside the capsule; this had been thoroughly tested to ensure it would not ignite upon…
Apollo 8 photographs, particularly Earthrise, had an immense social impact within the US. Major newspapers could publish these photographs immediately in color compared to weekly papers that could only display them black-and-white. On January 6, 1969, The New York Times featured an Apollo 8 special with color photographs; Time magazine also dedicated six pages to…
Three grown men lived for 21 days in an enclosed space smaller than an average bedroom, eating freeze-dried food, sleeping in bunks made from bamboo mats and tracking their progress using tools that would have been familiar to sailors hundreds of years earlier. On 20 July Armstrong and Aldrin left Columbia and entered their lunar…
Apollo 12 successfully navigated its journey to and from the moon despite two lightning strikes which caused minor instrumentation issues, allowing Conrad and Bean to conduct scientific experiments on its surface. Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean were Navy pilots who became close as shipboard cabin-mates; all three astronauts formed an unbreakable bond as…
Director Todd Douglas Miller has accomplished an astounding feat of historical preservation with Apollo 11. Using hyper-detailed 70mm footage culled from Apollo 11, he assembled an immersive movie without narration, talking heads or reconstructions. The film brings Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, along with their millions of observers worldwide, alive for a new generation. Apollo 11…
