The Apollo Mission
What does orbit mean?
Sputnik (First Satellite in Space (Russian)) 4th Oct 1957
Yuri Gagarin (the first man in space(12th April 1961), he was a Russian Cosmonaut)
To show USA superiority over Russia during The Cold War, President John F Kennedy made a famous speech in May 1961.
The missions to land a man on the moon were called Apollo. There was to be 17 Apollo missions. Named after the Greek God Apollo. The Nasa bosses said the image of “Apollo riding his chariot across the sun was appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed program.
Here is the Saturn 5 rocket. It was used for all the Apollo Missions. Engineers debated whether to land a large rocket on the moon but it would be impossible to make such a large spaceship take off again from the moon.
Scientists also didn’t know what the moon surface was like. Some said there was 10 meters of dust on the top of the moon. How would they land and take off on that?
So the astronauts left the Earth with this massive rocket and after visiting the moon, they returned in this capsule. What happened everything else?
A method called extract, undocking and docking was used. Look where the Lunar Module is located. It was put here to protect it during the flight but it needed to move to the front of the rocket when travelling to the moon. They achieved this at a speed of 25,000 mph.
The Lunar Module (Eagle) How were they to design it. For every kilogram of weight it took 4 kilograms of fuel to get it off the moon. Glass heavy so use very little. No seats etc reduce the weight. Neil Armstrong looked out a tiny window trying to land the Lunar Module (Eagle). He also had only a limited amount of fuel and had to land the Eagle in a set time limit.
The Lunar Module (Eagle) on the moon. When Neil Armstrong landed the Eagle on the moon he said, “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed”.
Just as the Lunar Module (Eagle( was about to land.
Practicing to drive the lunar module.
https://youtu.be/VhUGNaLgDJ8?t=1310
Saturn V Rocket Launch
The Sea of Tranquility (the landing site for Apollo 11).
The Lunar Module (Eagle) and the Command Module separating before landing on the moon.
Armstrong landing Eagle. Armstrong was heading for a boulder field and had to fly longer than he wanted. There was just 18 seconds of fuel left when he landed.
Listen for the voices of Gene Kranz (head of Mission Control) and Charlie Duke (CapCom). They issue a Go/NoGo to all their engineers to find out if it’s safe for the astronauts to continue.
