NASA
Since we are just outside of Houston, we are very close to the Johnson Space Center and NASA, so we will teach you a little about the Apollo Program. The Apollo program was designed to put "man" on the moon. By the way, NASA stands for
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
These are pictures from some of the Apollo missions courtesy of NASA. Only six missions landed on the moon. Read below to learn more.
Goclenius
crater taken from the Apollo 8 - Dec. 1968.
Earth coming
up over moon from the Apollo 10 - May 1969.
Neil Armstrong,
about to make the first step on the surface of the moon from Apollo 11 - July
1969 at the Sea of Tranquility in the lunar module; The Eagle.
The famous photo
of the first footprint on the moon from Apollo 11 - July 1969.
Apollo 12 Lunar
Module is in the background. The unmanned Surveyor III spacecraft is up
front - Nov. 1969 at the Sea of Storms.
The damaged
service module from Apollo 13 - April 1970. This is the mission that they made a
movie about. You know the one with Tom Hanks.
This is a boulder
(big rock) from the Apollo 14 mission - Feb. 1971 at Fra Mauro.
The lunar
rover from the Apollo 15 - July 1971 - at Hadley Rille
A Picture of
Plum Crater taken during the Apollo 16 mission - April 1972 - at Descartes.
Astronaut
Eugene Cernan saluting the flag on the final Apollo 17 mission - December 1972 -
at Taurus-Littrow. He was also the last person to step on the Moon.
Apollo was not the only program to study the moon. Remember that Apollo was designed to put "man" on the moon. The lunar Prospector and the Clementine Orbitor were also projects by NASA to study the moon. The Lunar Prospector was launched in 1997. It was designed to study the polar ice deposits and the gravity field. The Clementine was launched in 1994. It mapped the surface of the moon.
For more about the Lunar prospector visit: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunarprosp.html
for more about the Clementine Orbitor
visit:
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clementine.html
Do you have questions you've always wanted to ask an astronaut? Well, here is a site that has the answers to some of those questions. Neat information: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/qanda.html
Do you want to go to the moon
someday? Find out how to become an astronaut here: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/faq/astronaut.html