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The history of early space exploration.
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Lovell toggled the “master arm” switch to On and glanced around to see if everything else was in order. Guidance control was set to “Primary...
Aquarius, can you see any stars yet? Homepage with pictures
Kraft wanted to fire the descent engine now, get the ship back on its free-return slingshot course, and when it emerged from behind the moon...
Cronkite did not look good. He called Schirra over and thrust a sheet of wire-service copy at him. Schirra scanned the text hurriedly, and w...
EECOM, Sy Liebergot looked away from his monitor; the end, he knew, was at last here. Liebergot, through no fault of his own, was about to b...
As near as Lovell could tell, it would be a while before the ship’s endgame would play out. He had no way of calculating the leak rate in th...
By the time Flight Director Kranz heard Lovell’s report, of “Houston, we’ve had a problem. ” three controllers had reported related problems...
Swigert: I believe we’ve had a problem here! CapComm: This is Houston. Say again, please. Lovell: Houston, we’ve had a problem. Homepage wit...
As Lovell prepared for the thruster adjustments, Haise finished closing down the LEM and drifted through the tunnel back toward the command...
Milt Windier’s team at mission control quickly reviewed the status of the remaining four engines, ran the computations for the new engine cu...
During the Apollo era, North American-Downey built the Apollo Command & Service Module. After each completed spacecraft, Nasa conducted form...
Lovell completed four space flights and is one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice. Lovell accrued over 715 hours spent in space,...
At thirty-six, Haise was the youngest member of the crew of Apollo 13, and his black hair and angular features made him seem younger still....
John Leonard Swigert Jr. aka Jack Swigert was born on August 30, 1931 in Denver, Colorado to parents John Leonard Sr. and Virginia Swigert....
Just before the mission began things started to go wrong. The weekend before launch Charlie Duke, the backup lunar module pilot, came down w...
Targeted for touchdown on the third lunar landing was a place known as the Fra Mauro range, a stretch of rugged, Appalachian-type mounds 110...
Ten days ago, their Saturn V rocket had blasted Bean and his crew mates out of earth’s gravitational pull. Now their home planet was pulling...
Dick Gordon opened the tunnel to Intrepid, saw his companions floating in a dirty cloud of moon dust, and slammed the hatch closed. He calle...
After a total of 31.6 hours on the moon, the Lunar Module ascent stage fired for about 7 minutes placing Intrepid into an orbit of 10 miles...
Conrad and Bean now walked north, up Surveyor Crater’s 14 degree slope. Fatigue set in as Pete and Al walked up the crater wall. The hand to...
Surveyor 3 was now to their right, 300 feet away, gleaming in the morning sunlight. Antennas and sensors still reached upward from its tubul...
The problem with running into the sun was it was so bright that Conrad and Bean could not see the moon’s surface features until they were ri...
While Conrad led the way, Bean watched the ground for something interesting. It wasn’t easy to do field geology while running, and on the moo...
Pete and Al could not hear the excited shouts of the geologists in the back room down the hall from mission control, but they knew they had...
Most of the remaining moon walk time was spent collecting rock samples, making surface observations such as the small mounds or hills, and t...
According to the checklist, Bean was allowed 5 minutes to gain his balance and learn to walk on the Moon. Bean was amazed at his new buoyanc...
“The old Surveyor, yes sir. It can’t be any more than 600 feet from here. How about that?” (Pete Conrad.) Homepage with Pictures
“Hey, there it is! There it is! Son of a gun, right down the middle of the road! Look out there! I can’t believe it! Fantastic!” Pete Conrad...
There was adrenaline in Pete Conrad’s voice as he counted down the last seconds before ignition. He and Bean were still weightless, but thei...
At 83 hours mission elapsed time, the long lunar coast was almost over. It was time for the lunar orbit insertion burn. This burn would put...
It was impossible to check out the entire spacecraft; that could only be done on the ground. In the short time available, Griffin’s team ran...
John Aaron’s (EECOM) next call made him a legend in Mission Control. He said quickly and confidently, “Flight, try S-C-E to Aux.” Homepage wi...
It was 68 degrees, overcast, and raining at Cape Kennedy on November 14, 1969. The ceiling was 2,100 feet and the winds were light. There wa...
The Saturn V’s control system was housed inside and also referred to as the Instrument Unit (IU). Marshall Space Flight Centers Astrionics L...
Pete Conrad joined NASA as part of the second group of astronauts, known as the New Nine, on September 17, 1962. He was regarded as one of t...
The third man to walk on the moon, Charles Conrad Jr. was born on June 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, to Charles and Frances Conrad. He was their...
After completing a four-year tour of duty, he attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. He trained under th...
After graduating from the University of Washington, Gordon joined the US Navy, and after his first exposure to planes decided to become a pi...
At NASA Headquarters, George Mueller and other planners created a far-reaching plan that Administrator Paine made even more ambitious in ada...
The Vulcan device consisted of two major units. The first unit included various welding devices and a turn-table with samples of metals to b...
Finally, on April 25, 1969 during a meeting of the Soyuz State Commission, it was decided that the solo and docking flights outlined for 196...
The round-the-world tour began on September 29th and lasted until November 5th covering 28 cities in 25 countries in 38 days. The astronauts...
On August 10th, 1969 quarantine officially ended for the Apollo 11 crew, but that did not end the duties required for a flight of such magni...
The helicopter door slid open and Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins stepped out of the helicopter onto the lower deck of the carrier Hornet to...
At launch, Apollo 11 weighed 6,000,000 pounds, now all that was left of Columbia weighed in at a mere 11,000 pounds. Homepage with Pictures
The next critical event in the Apollo 11 mission was the Trans-Earth Injection burn. The burn involved firing the big service propulsion eng...
The ascent of the Eagle was strikingly swift compared with the liftoff of the huge Saturn V rocket from Cape Canaveral. Of course for the Mo...
Until now they had been focused on reaching the moon, landing, taking a walk on its surface, setting up experiments, exploring, and gatherin...
Without a word to Houston, while Buzz made his way back to Eagle, Armstrong took off running. Long strides carried Armstrong into the sun’s...