Project Apollo

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For other meanings, see Apollo (disambiguation).

Project Apollo was a series of human spaceflight missions undertaken by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) using the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn launch vehicle, conducted during the years 1961–1975. Developed by North American Aviation, it was devoted to the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth within the decade of the 1960s. This goal was achieved with the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969.

The program continued into the early 1970s to carry out the initial hands-on scientific exploration of the Moon, with a total of six successful landings. As of 2006, there has not been any further human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit. The later Skylab program and the joint American-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project used equipment originally produced for Apollo, and are often considered to be part of the overall program.

Despite the successes, there were several major failures, most notably the deaths of astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 launchpad fire, the explosion on Apollo 13 which nearly killed three other astronauts, and a release of poisonous gases during re-entry of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project spacecraft that nearly killed three more.

The Apollo project was named after the Greek god of the sun.

Background

The Apollo Program was originally conceived late in the Eisenhower administration as a follow-on to the Mercury program, doing advanced manned earth-orbital missions. In fact, it became the third program, following Gemini. The Apollo Program was dramatically reoriented to an aggressive lunar landing goal by President Kennedy with his announcement at a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961:

"...I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish..."John F. Kennedy, ["Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs"], May 25 1961

Another excerpt from Kennedy's Special Message to Congress:

"I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

"This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

"New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further--unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space."

The Apollo program was at least partly motivated by psycho-political considerations, in the context of the Cold War and the Space Race.

Choosing a mission mode

Having settled upon the Moon as a target, the Apollo mission planners were faced with the challenge of designing a set of flights that would meet Kennedy's stated goal while minimizing risk to human life, cost, and demands on technology and astronaut skill.

Four possible plans were considered.

• Direct Ascent: This plan was to boost a spaceship directly to the Moon. The entire spacecraft would land on and return from the Moon. This would have required a far more powerful rocket than the most powerful proposed at the time, the Nova rocket.
• Earth Orbit Rendezvous: This plan, known as Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR), would have required the launch of two Saturn V rockets, one containing the spaceship and one containing fuel. The spaceship would have docked in earth orbit and be fueled with enough fuel to make it to the Moon and back. Again, the entire spacecraft would have landed on the Moon.
• Lunar Surface Rendezvous: This would have required two spacecraft to be launched - the first one, being an automated vehicle carrying propellants, would land on the Moon, to be followed some time later by the manned vehicle. Propellant would be transferred from the automated vehicle to the manned vehicle before the manned vehicle could return to Earth.
• Lunar Orbit Rendezvous: This plan, which was adopted, is credited to John Houbolt and used the technique of 'Lunar Orbit Rendezvous' (LOR). The spacecraft was modular, composed of a 'Command/Service Module' (CSM) and a 'Lunar Module' (LM; originally Lunar Excursion Module ). The CSM contained the life support systems for the three-man crew's five-day round trip to the Moon and the heat shield for their reentry to Earth's atmosphere. The LM would separate from the CSM in lunar orbit and carry two astronauts for the descent to the lunar surface, then back up to the CSM.

In contrast with the other plans, the LOR plan required only a small part of the spacecraft to land on the Moon, thereby minimizing the mass to be launched from the Moon's surface for the return trip. The mass to be launched was further minimized by leaving part of the LM (that with the descent engine) behind on the Moon.

The Lunar Module itself was composed of a descent stage and an ascent stage, the former serving as a launch platform for the latter when the lunar exploration party blasted off for lunar orbit where they would dock with the CSM prior to returning to Earth. The plan had the advantage that since the LM was to be eventually discarded, it could be made very light, so the Moon mission could be launched with a single Saturn V rocket. However, at the time that LOR was decided, some mission planners were uneasy at the large number of dockings and undockings called for by the plan.

To learn lunar landing techniques, astronauts practiced in the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), a flying vehicle that simulated (by means of a special, additional jet engine) the reduced gravity that the Lunar Module would actually fly in.

Spacecraft

The Apollo spacecraft consisted of three main sections, plus two minor sections.

The Command Module (CM) was the part in which the astronauts spent most of their time, including launch and landing. It was the only part that returned to Earth after the mission. The Service Module (SM) housed the equipment needed by the astronauts, such as oxygen tanks, and the engine that would take the spacecraft into and out of lunar orbit. The combined Command and Service modules were called the CSM.

The Lunar Module (LM) (also known as Lunar Excursion Module, or LEM), was the part of the spacecraft that actually landed on the moon. It was comprised of two stages, one for descent, and one for ascent.

The Launch Escape Tower (LET) would carry the Command Module clear of the launch vehicle, should it explode during launch, and the Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter (SLA) was used to connect the spacecraft to the Launch Vehicle. In addition, on Apollos 9 - 17, it housed and protected the Lunar Module and on the ASTP flight, it housed the docking adapter.

Astronauts

The following astronauts flew Apollo missions:

From the Mercury Seven

• Walter Marty Schirra, Jr., USN – Apollo 7
• Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., USN – Apollo 14

From Astronaut Group 2

• Neil Alden Armstrong – Apollo 11
• Frank Frederick Borman II, USAF – Apollo 8
• Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr., USN – Apollo 12, Skylab 2
• James Arthur Lovell, Jr., USN – Apollo 8, Apollo 13
• James Alton McDivitt, USAF – Apollo 9
• Thomas Patten Stafford, USAF – Apollo 10, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
• John Watts Young, USN – Apollo 10, Apollo 16

From Astronaut Group 3

• Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, USAF – Apollo 11
• William Alison Anders, USAF – Apollo 8
• Alan LaVern Bean, USN – Apollo 12, Skylab 3
• Eugene Andrew Cernan, USN – Apollo 10, Apollo 17
• Michael Collins, USAF – Apollo 11
• Walter Cunningham, USMC – Apollo 7
• Donn Fulton Eisele, USAF – Apollo 7
• Richard Francis Gordon, Jr., USN – Apollo 12
• Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart, USAF – Apollo 9
• David Randolph Scott, USAF – Apollo 9, Apollo 15

From Astronaut Group 4

• Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt – Apollo 17

From Astronaut Group 5

• Charles Moss Duke, Jr., USAF – Apollo 16
• Ronald Ellwin Evans, Jr., USN – Apollo 17
• Fred Wallace Haise, Jr., USMC – Apollo 13
• James Benson Irwin, USAF – Apollo 15
• Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II, USN – Apollo 16
• Edgar Dean Mitchell, USN – Apollo 14
• Stuart Allen Roosa, USAF – Apollo 14
• John Leonard "Jack" Swigert, Jr., USAF – Apollo 13
• Alfred Merrill Worden, USAF – Apollo 15

In addition, the following astronauts flew on Post-Apollo missions using Apollo hardware:

From the Mercury Seven

• Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton, USAF – Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

From Astronaut Group 4

• Owen Kay Garriott – Skylab 3
• Edward George Gibson – Skylab 4
• Joseph Peter Kerwin, USN – Skylab 2

From Astronaut Group 5

• Vance DeVoe Brand, USMC – Skylab Rescue (never flown), Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
• Gerald Paul Carr, USMC – Skylab 4
• Jack Robert Lousma, USMC – Skylab 3
• William Reid Pogue, USAF – Skylab 4
• Paul Joseph Weitz, USN – Skylab 2

Missions

The Apollo program used four types of launch vehicles:

• Little Joe II - unmanned suborbital launch escape system development.
• Saturn I - unmanned suborbital and orbital hardware development.
• Saturn IB - unmanned and manned earth orbit development and operational missions.
• Saturn V - unmanned and manned earth orbit and lunar missions.

The Marshall Space Flight Center, which designed the Saturn rockets, referred to the flights as Saturn-Apollo (SA), while Kennedy Space Center referred to the flights as Apollo-Saturn (AS). This is why the unmanned Saturn 1 flights are referred to as SA and the unmanned Saturn 1B are referred to as AS.

Dates given below are dates of launch.

Unmanned missions

Mission	LV Serial No	Launch Date	Launch Time	Remarks
SA-1	S-101	October 27, 1961	15:06 GMT	Test of the Saturn 1 Rocket
SA-2	S-102	April 25, 1962	14:00 GMT	Test of the S-1 Rocket and carried 109 m³ of water into the upper atmosphere to investigate effects on radio transmission and changes in local weather conditions.
SA-3	AS-103	November 16, 1962	17:45 GMT	Repeat of the SA-2 mission.
SA-4	AS-104	March 28, 1963	20:11 GMT	Test effects of premature engine shutdown
SA-5	AS-105	January 29, 1964	16:25 GMT	First flight of live second stage
A-101	AS-106	May 28, 1964	17:07 GMT	Tested the structural integrity of a boilerplate Apollo Command and Service Module
A-102	AS-107	September 18, 1964	17:22 GMT	Carried the first programmable computer on the Saturn I vehicle; last test flight
A-103	AS-109	February 16, 1965	14:37 GMT	Carried Pegasus A micrometeorite satellite plus a CSM boilerplate
*A-104	AS-108	May 25, 1965	07:35 GMT	Carried Pegasus B micrometeorite satellite plus a CSM boilerplate
A-105	AS-110	July 30, 1965	13:00 GMT	Carried Pegasus C micrometeorite satellite plus a CSM boilerplate

Pad abort tests

Mission	Launch Date	Launch Time	Remarks
Pad Abort Test-1	November 7, 1963	16:00 GMT	Launch Escape System (LES) abort test from launch pad.
Pad Abort Test-2	June 29, 1965	13:00 GMT	LES pad abort test of near Block-I CM.

Mission	LV Serial No	Launch Date	Launch Time	Remarks
QTV		August 28, 1963	13:05 GMT	Little Joe II qualification test.
A-001		May 13, 1964	13:00 GMT	LES transonic abort test.
A-002		December 8, 1964	15:00 GMT	LES maximum altitude, Max-Q abort test.
A-003		May 19, 1965	13:01 GMT	LES canard maximum altitude abort test.
A-004		January 20, 1966	15:17 GMT	LES test of maximum weight, tumbling Block-I CM.

Unmanned

Mission	Rocket	LV Serial No	Launch Date	Launch Time	Remarks
AS-201	Saturn IB	AS-201	February 26, 1966	16:12 GMT	First test flight of Saturn IB rocket
AS-203	Saturn IB	AS-203	July 5, 1966	14:53 GMT	Investigated effects of weightlessness on fuel tanks of S-IVB
AS-202	Saturn IB	AS-202	August 25, 1966	17:15 GMT	Sub-orbital test flight of Command and Service Module
Apollo 4	Saturn V	AS-501	November 9, 1967	12:00 GMT	First test of the Saturn V booster
Apollo 5	Saturn IB	AS-204	January 22, 1968	22:48 GMT	Test of the Saturn IB booster and Lunar Module
Apollo 6	Saturn V	AS-502	April 4, 1968	16:12 GMT	Test of the Saturn V booster
Skylab 1	Saturn INT-21	AS-513	May 14, 1973	17:30 GMT	Unmanned launch of Skylab 1 workshop using Saturn INT-21 (two-stage version of the Saturn V booster). Last flight of Saturn V booster.

Manned missions

Mission	Rocket	LV Serial No	Commander	Senior Pilot	Pilot	CM Name	LM Name	Launch Date	Launch Time	Duration
Apollo 1	Saturn IB	AS-204	Grissom	White	Chaffee	N/A	No LM	February 21, 1967 (Planned)	N/A	N/A
Unlaunched - On January 27, 1967 Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee are killed when fire erupts in their Apollo spacecraft during a test on the launch pad.
Mission	Rocket	LV Serial No	Commander	CM Pilot	LM Pilot	CM Name	LM Name	Launch Date	Launch Time	Duration
Apollo 7	Saturn IB	AS-205	Schirra	Eisele	Cunningham	N/A	No LM	October 11, 1968	15:02 GMT	10d 20h 09m 03s
First manned Apollo flight, first manned flight of the Saturn IB.
Apollo 8	Saturn V	AS-503	Borman	Lovell	Anders	N/A	No LM	December 21, 1968	12:51 GMT	06d 03h 00m 42s
First manned flight around the Moon, first manned flight of the Saturn V.
Apollo 9	Saturn V	AS-504	McDivitt	Scott	Schweickart	Gumdrop	Spider	March 3, 1969	16:00 GMT	10d 01h 00m 54s
First manned flight of the Lunar Module.
Apollo 10	Saturn V	AS-505	Stafford	Young	Cernan	Charlie Brown	Snoopy	May 18, 1969	16:49 GMT	08d 00h 03m 23s
First manned flight of the Lunar Module around the Moon.
Apollo 11	Saturn V	AS-506	Armstrong	Collins	Aldrin	Columbia	Eagle	July 16, 1969	13:32 GMT	08d 03h 18m 35s
First manned landing on the Moon, July 20.
Apollo 12	Saturn V	AS-507	Conrad	Gordon	Bean	Yankee Clipper	Intrepid	November 14, 1969	16:22 GMT	10d 04h 36m 24s
First precise manned landing on the Moon. Recovered part of Surveyor 3 probe.
Apollo 13	Saturn V	AS-508	Lovell	Swigert	Haise	Odyssey	Aquarius	April 11, 1970	19:13 GMT	05d 22h 54m 41s
Oxygen tank exploded en route, forcing cancellation of landing. First (and, as of 2006, only) manned non-orbital lunar flight.
Apollo 14	Saturn V	AS-509	Shepard	Roosa	Mitchell	Kitty Hawk	Antares	January 31, 1971	21:03 GMT	09d 00h 01m 58s
Alan Shepard, the sole astronaut of the Mercury MR-3 mission - and thus the first American in space - walks on the Moon.
Apollo 15	Saturn V	AS-510	Scott	Worden	Irwin	Endeavour	Falcon	July 26, 1971	13:34 GMT	12d 07h 11m 53s
First mission with the Lunar Rover vehicle.
Apollo 16	Saturn V	AS-511	Young	Mattingly	Duke	Casper	Orion	April 16, 1972	17:54 GMT	11d 01h 51m 05s
First landing in the lunar highlands.
Apollo 17	Saturn V	AS-512	Cernan	Evans	Schmitt	America	Challenger	December 7, 1972	05:33 GMT	12d 13h 51m 59s
Final Apollo lunar mission, first night launch, only mission with a professional geologist.

The original pre-lunar landing program was more conservative but, as the 'all-up' test flights for the Saturn V proved successful, some missions were deleted. The revised schedule published in October 1967 had the first manned Apollo CSM earth orbit mission (Apollo 7) followed by an Earth Orbit Rendezvous of the CSM and LM launched on two Saturn 1Bs (Apollo 8) followed by a Saturn V launched CSM on a Large Earth Orbit Mission (Apollo 9) followed by the Saturn V launched dress rehearsal in Lunar Orbit with Apollo 10. By the summer of 1968 it became clear to program managers that a fully functional LM would not be available for the Apollo 8 mission. Rather than perform a simple earth orbiting mission, they chose to send Apollo 8 around the moon during Christmas. The original idea for this switch was the brainchild of George Low. Although it has often been claimed that this change was made as a direct response to Soviet attempts to fly a piloted Zond spacecraft around the moon, there is no evidence that this was actually the case. NASA officials were aware of the Soviet Zond flights, but the timing of the Zond missions does not correspond well with the extensive written record from NASA about the Apollo 8 decision. It is relatively certain that the Apollo 8 decision was primarily based upon the LM schedule, rather than fear of the Soviets beating the Americans to the moon.

Cancelled lunar missions

Mission name/designation	Commander	CM Pilot	LM Pilot	Mission date	Date of cancellation
Apollo 18	Haise	Pogue	Carr	February 1972	September 2, 1970
Budget cuts - NOTE: The Apollo 15 designation was re-used as Apollo 16 became 15, 17 became 16, and 18 became 17.
Apollo 19	Gordon	Brand	Schmitt	July 1972	September 2, 1970
Budget cuts
Apollo 20	Roosa	Lousma	Lind	December 1972	January 4, 1970
Launch vehicle needed to launch Skylab

Post-Apollo missions using Apollo hardware and

Mission	Rocket	LV Serial No	Commander	Pilot	Science Pilot	Launch Date	Launch Time	Duration
Skylab 2	Saturn IB	AS-206	Conrad	Weitz	Kerwin	May 25, 1973	13:00 GMT	28d 00h 49m 49s
First crew of the Skylab Space Station.
Skylab 3	Saturn IB	AS-207	Bean	Lousma	Garriott	July 28, 1973	11:10 GMT	59d 11h 09m 34s
Second Skylab crew. SM thruster malfunction nearly necessitated a Rescue Mission.
Skylab 4	Saturn IB	AS-208	Carr	Pogue	Gibson	November 16 1973	14:01 GMT	84d 01h 15m 31s
Third and final Skylab crew. Penultimate flight of Apollo.
Mission	Rocket	LV Serial No	Commander	CM Pilot	Docking Module Pilot	Launch Date	Launch Time	Duration
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (Apollo 18)	Saturn IB	AS-209	Stafford	Brand	Slayton	July 15 1975	12:20 GMT	05d 22h 30m 54s
Final flight of both Apollo and the Saturn Ib. Rendezvous and docking with Soyuz 19 spacecraft.

Launch Complex utilization

• Launch Complex 34 - SA-1, SA-2, SA-3, SA-4, AS-201, AS-202, AS-204 (Apollo 1), AS-205 (Apollo 7)
• Launch Complex 37A - no launches
• Launch Complex 37B - SA-5, A-101, A-102, A-103, A-104, A-105, AS-203, AS-204 (Apollo 5)
• Launch Complex 39A - AS-501 (Apollo 4), AS-502 (Apollo 6), AS-503 (Apollo 8), AS-504 (Apollo 9), AS-506 (Apollo 11), AS-507 (Apollo 12), AS-508 (Apollo 13), AS-509 (Apollo 14), AS-510 (Apollo 15), AS-511 (Apollo 16), AS-512 (Apollo 17), AS-513 (Skylab 1)
• Launch Complex 39B - AS-505 (Apollo 10), AS-206 (Skylab 2), AS-207 (Skylab 3), AS-208 (Skylab 4), AS-210 (ASTP).

Samples Returned

Lunar Mission	Sample Returned
Apollo 11	22 kg
Apollo 12	34 kg
Apollo 14	43 kg
Apollo 15	77 kg
Apollo 16	95 kg
Apollo 17	111 kg

Apollo returned 381.7kg (841.5 lb) of rocks and other material from the Moon; much is stored at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston.

In general the rocks collected from the Moon are extremely old compared to rocks found on the Earth, as measured by radiometric dating techniques. The youngest of the rocks is older than most rocks seen on Earth. They range in age from 3.2 billion years from the basalt samples from the lunar mare, up to 4.6 billion years in the highlands. As such they represent samples from a very early period in the formation of the Solar System.

One of the most important rocks found during the Apollo Program was the Genesis Rock, retrived by astronauts James Irwin and David Scott of Apollo 15. The rock dates back to the formation of the moon.

Many of the rocks appear to be littered with micrometeoroid impact craters, something which is never seen on earth due to the thick atmosphere, but which is possible on the moon.

Apollo Applications

In the speech which initiated Apollo, Kennedy declared that no other program would have as great a long-range effect on America's ambitions in outer space. Following the success of Project Apollo, both NASA and its major contractors investigated several post-lunar applications for the Apollo hardware. The "Apollo Extension Series", later called the "Apollo Applications Program", proposed up to thirty flights to Earth Orbit. Many of these would use the space that the lunar module took up in the Saturn rocket to carry scientific equipment.

One plan involved using the Saturn IB to take the Command/Service Module (CSM) to a variety of low-earth orbits for missions lasting up to 45 days. Some missions would involve the docking of two CSMs, and transfer of supplies. The Saturn V would be necessary to take it to polar orbit, or sun-synchronous orbit (neither of which has yet been achieved by any manned spacecraft), and even to the geosynchronous orbit of Syncom 3, a communications satellite not quite in geostationary orbit. This was the first functioning communications satellite at that now-common great distance from the Earth, and it was small enough to be carried through the hatch and taken back to Earth for study as to the effects of radiation on its electronic components in that environment over a period of years. A return to the moon was also planned, this time to orbit for a longer time to map the surface with high-precision equipment. This mission would not include a landing.

Of all the plans, only two were implemented: the Skylab space station (May 1973 – February 1974), and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (July 1975). Skylab's fuselage was constructed from the second stage of a Saturn IB, and the station was equipped with the Apollo Telescope Mount, itself based on a lunar module. The station's three crews were ferried into orbit atop Saturn IBs, riding in CSMs; the station itself had been launched with a modified Saturn V. Skylab's last crew departed the station on February 8, 1974, whilst the station itself returned prematurely to Earth in 1979, by which time it had become the oldest operational Apollo component.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project involved a docking in Earth orbit between an unnamed CSM and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. The mission lasted from July 15 to July 24, 1975. Although the Soviet Union continued to operate the Soyuz and Salyut space vehicles, NASA's next manned mission would not be until STS-1 on April 12, 1981.

In 1964/5 Grumman, the primary contrator for the Apollo LM systems, attempted to interest the USAF and Navy in a military version of CSM/LM configuration. The LM would have been equipped with a manipulator arm and projectile weapons to intercept and disable enemy satellites. The proposal was never fully developed and was abandoned in 1967.

End of the program

Originally three additional lunar landing missions had been planned, as Apollo 18 through Apollo 20. In light of the drastically shrinking NASA budget and the decisio

 

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