This plea gave birth to the Apollo Moonlanding project. In the event, the Americans achieved not just one, but two landings before the decade was out. The first landing, on 20 July 1969, saw Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walking on the Moon's Sea of Tranquillity. They were followed over the next three-and-a-half years by five more crews, from Apollo 12,14,15,16 and 17. Apollo 13 aimed for a Moon landing but was nearly blasted apart en route. The crew just managed to make it safely back to Earth. The Apollo 17 astronauts left the Moon on 14 December 1972. No humans will return there this century.
To
launch human beings to the Moon and bring them back safely was an enormous
undertaking. It required a great technological effort and also the creation
of some gigantic structures and equipment. To launch the 45-tonne Apollo
spacecraft to the Moon required a mammoth rocket, the Saturn V, which stood
111 m high and weighed 3,000 tonnes.
A Saturn V rocket thunders away from the launch pad (left) on 21 December 1968, carrying three astronauts in Apollo 8 to the first human encounter of the Moon.
To assemble such a giant required a massive building, the Vehicle Assembly Building, at the launch site, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This building, now used to assemble the Space Shuttle, measures 160 m high, 158 m wide and 218 m long.
A three-module design was adopted to fit in with the technique chosen
for the Moon landing, called lunar orbit rendezvous. The main part of the
craft was the pressurized command module (CM), which housed the crew of
three. This was the only part to return to Earth. For most of the mission
it was attached to the service module (SM), the combined unit being termed
the CSM. The third unit was the lunar module (LM), the spacecraft used
to ferry two of the crew to and from the Moon's surface.
To the Moon and back
The technique Apollo used to reach the Moon was called lunar orbit
rendezvous. The Apollo spacecraft lifted off atop a Saturn V rocket (1,2,3).
It was then accelerated out of Earth orbit (4) and configured for the outward
journey (5,6,7). Retrofire (8) took it into lunar orbit, where the lunar
module (LM) separated (9) and dropped down to land (10). After the landing
mission, the top part of the LM took off (11) and rendezvoused with the
mother ship (12). A burn of the main engine (13) boosted the craft out
of lunar orbit for the return to Earth. Before re-entry the service module
was jetissoned (14). The command module, travelling at nearly 11 km a second
and with heat shield blazing (15), plunged through the atmosphere. The
air slowed it down, then parachutes opened to lower it to a gentle splashdown
(16).
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Astronaut Eugene Cernan takes the lunar roving vehicle (left) for a test drive during the Apollo 17 Moon-landing mission in December 1972. The collapsible "Moon buggy" was powered by electric motors and had a top speed of 16 km/h. |
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On the Apollo 15 mission James Irwin is pictured with the lunar module (left) and lunar roving vehicle. Behind him are the Apennine Mountains. |
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Sites of the six Apollo landings. (left) Apollo 11 landed on the Sea of Tranquillity; Apollo 12 on the Ocean of Storms; Apollo 74 at Fro Mauro; Apollo 75 and 7 7 on the edge of the Sea of Serenity; and Apollo 76 in the lunar highlands. |
