Moon Mission

Due to design and manufacturing delays in the LM, Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 swapped prime and backup crews, and Armstrong's crew became the backup for Apollo 8. Based on the normal crew rotation scheme, Armstrong was then expected to command Apollo Doctors diagnosed the problem as a bony growth between his fifth and sixth vertebrae, requiring surgery. Anders had flown with Lovell on Apollo 8. Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup CMP in case Apollo 11 was delayed past its intended July launch date, at which point Anders would be unavailable.

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Lovell, Haise, and Mattingly were later assigned as the prime crew of Apollo During Projects Mercury and Gemini, each mission had a prime and a backup crew. For Apollo, a third crew of astronauts was added, known as the support crew. The support crew maintained the flight plan, checklists and mission ground rules, and ensured that the prime and backup crews were apprised of changes.

They developed procedures, especially those for emergency situations, so these were ready for when the prime and backup crews came to train in the simulators, allowing them to concentrate on practicing and mastering them. Lind , Owen K. Garriott and Harrison Schmitt. The four shift flight directors for this mission were: The Apollo 11 mission emblem was designed by Collins, who wanted a symbol for "peaceful lunar landing by the United States". At Lovell's suggestion, he chose the bald eagle the national bird of the United States, as the symbol.

Tom Wilson, a simulator instructor, suggested that they put an olive branch in its beak to represent their peaceful mission. Collins added a lunar background with the Earth in the distance. The sunlight in the image was coming from the wrong direction; the shadow should have been in the lower part of the Earth instead of the left. Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins decided that the Eagle and the Moon would be in their natural colours, and decided on a blue and gold border. Armstrong was concerned that "eleven" would not be understood by non-English speakers, so they went with "Apollo 11", [42] and they decided not to put their names on the patch, so it would "be representative of everyone who had worked toward a lunar landing".

Bob Gilruth , the director of the MSC felt that the talons of the eagle looked "too warlike". Anthony dollar unveiled in The name Snowcone was used for the CM and Haystack was used for the LM in both internal and external communications during early mission planning. The LM was named Eagle after the motif which was featured prominently on the mission insignia.

It also referenced Columbia , a historical name of the United States. The astronaut had personal preference kits PPKs , small bags containing personal items of significance that they wanted to take with them on the mission. This pin had been intended to be flown on that mission and given to Slayton afterwards; but following the disastrous launch pad fire and subsequent funerals, the widows gave the pin to Slayton.

Armstrong took it with him on Apollo These were the result of two years' worth of studies based on high-resolution photography of the lunar surface by the five unmanned probes of the Lunar Orbiter program and information about surface conditions provided by the Surveyor program. Scientific value was not a consideration. Areas that appeared promising on photographs taken on Earth were often found to be totally unacceptable. The original requirement that the site be free of craters had to be relaxed, as no such site was found.

The requirement for the Sun angle was particularly restrictive, limiting the launch date to one day per month. In May , Apollo 10 flew to within 15 kilometres 9. The only change in the configuration of the command module was the removal of some insulation from the forward hatch.

China Preps for Launch of Historic Mission to Moon's Far Side on Friday

At on May 20, the 5,tonne 5,long-ton; 6,short-ton assembly departed the Vehicle Assembly Building atop the crawler-transporter , bound for Launch Pad 39A, part of Launch Complex 39 , while Apollo 10 was still on its way to the Moon. A countdown test commenced on June 26, and concluded on July 2. The launch complex was floodlit on the night of July 15, when the crawler-transporter carried the mobile service structure back to its parking area.

Slayton roused the crew shortly after , and they showered, shaved, and had the traditional pre-flight breakfast of steak and eggs with Slayton and the backup crew. They then donned their space suits and began breathing pure oxygen. At , they headed out to Launch Complex Along with a technician, he helped Armstrong into the left hand couch at Five minutes later, Collins joined him, taking up his position on the right hand couch. Finally, Aldrin entered, taking the center couch. The closeout crew then left the launch complex about an hour before launch time. The countdown became automated at three minutes and twenty seconds before launch time.

An estimated one million spectators watched the launch of Apollo 11 from the highways and beaches in the vicinity of the launch site. Dignitaries included the Chief of Staff of the United States Army , General William Westmoreland , four cabinet members , 19 state governors , 40 mayors , 60 ambassadors and congressmen.

Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson. The launch was televised live in 33 countries, with an estimated 25 million viewers in the United States alone. Millions more around the world listened to radio broadcasts. After one and a half orbits, the S-IVB third-stage engine pushed the spacecraft onto its trajectory toward the Moon with the trans-lunar injection TLI burn at About 30 minutes later, with Collins in the left seat and at the controls, the transposition, docking, and extraction maneuver was performed.

This involved separating Columbia from the spent S-IVB stage, turning around, and docking with Eagle still attached to the stage. After the LM was extracted, the combined spacecraft headed for the Moon, while the rocket stage flew on a trajectory past the Moon.

A slingshot effect from passing around the Moon threw it into an orbit around the Sun. On July 19 at The site was selected in part because it had been characterized as relatively flat and smooth by the automated Ranger 8 and Surveyor 5 landers and the Lunar Orbiter mapping spacecraft and unlikely to present major landing or EVA challenges.

As the descent began, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were passing landmarks on the surface two or three seconds early, and reported that they were "long"; they would land miles west of their target point. Eagle was traveling too fast. The problem could have been mascons —concentrations of high mass that could have altered the trajectory.

Flight Director Gene Kranz speculated that it could have resulted from extra air pressure in the docking tunnel. Or it could have been the result of Eagle ' s pirouette maneuver. Inside Mission Control Center, computer engineer Jack Garman told guidance officer Steve Bales it was safe to continue the descent, and this was relayed to the crew. The program alarms indicated "executive overflows", meaning the guidance computer could not complete all of its tasks in real time and had to postpone some of them. To blame the computer for the Apollo 11 problems is like blaming the person who spots a fire and calls the fire department.

Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software's action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones. The computer, rather than almost forcing an abort, prevented an abort.

If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was. During the mission, the cause was diagnosed as the rendezvous radar switch being in the wrong position, causing the computer to process data from both the rendezvous and landing radars at the same time. Having the rendezvous radar on so that it was warmed up in case of an emergency landing abort should have been irrelevant to the computer, but an electrical phasing mismatch between two parts of the rendezvous radar system could cause the stationary antenna to appear to the computer as dithering back and forth between two positions, depending upon how the hardware randomly powered up.

The extra spurious cycle stealing , as the rendezvous radar updated an involuntary counter, caused the computer alarms. Armstrong took semi-automatic control. Throughout the descent, Aldrin called out navigation data to Armstrong, who was busy piloting Eagle. ACA — out of detent. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm — off. ACA was the attitude control assembly, the LM's control stick. LGC address contained the variable that indicated that the LM had landed. Eagle landed at This was later found to be the result of greater propellant 'slosh' than expected, uncovering a fuel sensor.

On subsequent missions, extra anti-slosh baffles were added to the tanks to prevent this. The Eagle has landed. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

He then took communion privately. At this time NASA was still fighting a lawsuit brought by atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair who had objected to the Apollo 8 crew reading from the Book of Genesis demanding that their astronauts refrain from broadcasting religious activities while in space. As such, Aldrin chose to refrain from directly mentioning taking communion on the Moon. Aldrin was an elder at the Webster Presbyterian Church , and his communion kit was prepared by the pastor of the church, Dean Woodruff.

Webster Presbyterian possesses the chalice used on the Moon and commemorates the event each year on the Sunday closest to July Preparations for the EVA began at The remote control unit controls on his chest kept him from seeing his feet. Climbing down the nine-rung ladder, Armstrong pulled a D-ring to deploy the modular equipment stowage assembly MESA folded against Eagle 's side and activate the TV camera.

Apollo 11 used slow-scan television TV incompatible with broadcast TV, so it was displayed on a special monitor and a conventional TV camera viewed this monitor, significantly reducing the quality of the picture. Minutes later the feed was switched to the more sensitive Parkes radio telescope in Australia. While still on the ladder, Armstrong uncovered a plaque mounted on the LM descent stage bearing two drawings of Earth of the Western and Eastern Hemispheres , an inscription, and signatures of the astronauts and President Nixon. Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July A.

We came in peace for all mankind. After describing the surface dust as "very fine-grained" and "almost like a powder", [7] at Armstrong intended to say "That's one small step for a man", but the word "a" is not audible in the transmission, and thus was not initially reported by most observers of the live broadcast. When later asked about his quote, Armstrong said he believed he said "for a man", and subsequent printed versions of the quote included the "a" in square brackets.

One explanation for the absence may be that his accent caused him to slur the words "for a" together; another is the intermittent nature of the audio and video links to Earth, partly because of storms near Parkes Observatory. More recent digital analysis of the tape claims to reveal the "a" may have been spoken but obscured by static.

About seven minutes after stepping onto the Moon's surface, Armstrong collected a contingency soil sample using a sample bag on a stick. He then folded the bag and tucked it into a pocket on his right thigh. This was to guarantee there would be some lunar soil brought back in case an emergency required the astronauts to abandon the EVA and return to the LM. He described the view with the simple phrase: Armstrong said that moving in the lunar gravity , one-sixth of Earth's, was "even perhaps easier than the simulations It's absolutely no trouble to walk around.

The PLSS backpack created a tendency to tip backward, but neither astronaut had serious problems maintaining balance. Loping became the preferred method of movement. The astronauts reported that they needed to plan their movements six or seven steps ahead. The fine soil was quite slippery.

Aldrin remarked that moving from sunlight into Eagle 's shadow produced no temperature change inside the suit, but the helmet was warmer in sunlight, so he felt cooler in shadow. As they worked, the moonwalkers kicked up gray dust which soiled the outer part of their suits.

The astronauts planted a specially designed U. Aldrin remembered, "Of all the jobs I had to do on the Moon the one I wanted to go the smoothest was the flag raising. Aldrin was afraid it might topple in front of TV viewers. But he gave "a crisp West Point salute".

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Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you've done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world, I am sure they too join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is.

Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquillity, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquillity to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one: It's a great honor and privilege for us to be here, representing not only the United States, but men of peace of all nations, and with interest and curiosity, and men with a vision for the future.

It's an honor for us to be able to participate here today. They deployed the EASEP , which included a passive seismic experiment package used to measure moonquakes and a retroreflector array used for the lunar laser ranging experiment. The astronauts then collected rock samples using scoops and tongs on extension handles.

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Many of the surface activities took longer than expected, so they had to stop documenting sample collection halfway through the allotted 34 minutes. Armalcolite was named after Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. All have subsequently been found on Earth. Mission Control used a coded phrase to warn Armstrong that his metabolic rates were high, and that he should slow down. He was moving rapidly from task to task as time ran out. As metabolic rates remained generally lower than expected for both astronauts throughout the walk, Mission Control granted the astronauts a minute extension.

Aldrin entered Eagle first. With some difficulty the astronauts lifted film and two sample boxes containing This proved to be an inefficient tool, and later missions preferred to carry equipment and samples up to the LM by hand. Armstrong then jumped onto the ladder's third rung, and climbed into the LM. After transferring to LM life support , the explorers lightened the ascent stage for the return to lunar orbit by tossing out their PLSS backpacks, lunar overshoes, an empty Hasselblad camera, and other equipment.

The hatch was closed again at They then pressurized the LM and settled down to sleep. Nixon's speech writer William Safire had prepared In Event of Moon Disaster for the President to read on television in the event the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the Moon.

Haldeman , in which Safire suggested a protocol the administration might follow in reaction to such a disaster. While moving inside the cabin, Aldrin accidentally damaged the circuit breaker that would arm the main engine for lift off from the Moon. There was a concern this would prevent firing the engine, stranding them on the Moon. A felt-tip pen was sufficient to activate the switch; had this not worked, the LM circuitry could have been reconfigured to allow firing the ascent engine. The disk carries the goodwill statements by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon and messages from leaders of 73 countries around the world.

After about seven hours of rest, the crew was awakened by Houston to prepare for the return flight. Two and a half hours later, at Aldrin looked up in time to witness the flag topple: I was concentrating on the computers, and Neil was studying the attitude indicator , but I looked up long enough to see the flag fall over.

During his day flying solo around the Moon, Collins never felt lonely. Although it has been said "not since Adam has any human known such solitude", [] Collins felt very much a part of the mission.

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In his autobiography he wrote: After Eagle ' s rendezvous with Columbia , the ascent stage was jettisoned into lunar orbit on July 21, , at Just before the Apollo 12 flight, it was noted that Eagle was still likely to be orbiting the Moon. Later NASA reports mentioned that Eagle 's orbit had decayed, resulting in it impacting in an "uncertain location" on the lunar surface.

On July 23, the last night before splashdown, the three astronauts made a television broadcast in which Collins commented:. The Saturn V rocket which put us in orbit is an incredibly complicated piece of machinery, every piece of which worked flawlessly We have always had confidence that this equipment will work properly. All this is possible only through the blood, sweat, and tears of a number of people All you see is the three of us, but beneath the surface are thousands and thousands of others, and to all of those, I would like to say, "Thank you very much.

This has been far more than three men on a mission to the Moon; more, still, than the efforts of a government and industry team; more, even, than the efforts of one nation. We feel that this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown Personally, in reflecting on the events of the past several days, a verse from Psalms comes to mind. The responsibility for this flight lies first with history and with the giants of science who have preceded this effort; next with the American people, who have, through their will, indicated their desire; next with four administrations and their Congresses, for implementing that will; and then, with the agency and industry teams that built our spacecraft, the Saturn, the Columbia, the Eagle, and the little EMU , the spacesuit and backpack that was our small spacecraft out on the lunar surface.

We would like to give special thanks to all those Americans who built the spacecraft; who did the construction, design, the tests, and put their hearts and all their abilities into those craft. To those people tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all the other people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo On the return to Earth, a bearing at the Guam tracking station failed, potentially preventing communication on the last segment of the Earth return.

A regular repair was not possible in the available time but the station director, Charles Force, had his ten-year-old son Greg use his small hands to reach into the housing and pack it with grease. Greg was later thanked by Armstrong. Hornet was then at her home port of Long Beach, California. To make room, most of Hornet ' s air wing was left behind in Long Beach.

Special recovery equipment was also loaded, including a boilerplate command module used for training. After a night on board, they would fly to Hornet in Marine One for a few hours of ceremonies. Paine , who flew to Hornet from Pago Pago in one of Hornet ' s carrier onboard delivery aircraft. He realized that a storm front was headed for the Apollo recovery area. Poor visibility was a serious threat to the mission; if the helicopters could not locate Columbia , the spacecraft, its crew, and its priceless cargo of Moon rocks might be lost.

Brandli alerted Navy Captain Willard S. On their recommendation, Rear Admiral Donald C.

This altered the flight plan. A different sequence of computer programs was used, one never before attempted. In a conventional entry, P64 was followed by P For a skip-out re-entry, P65 and P66 were employed to handle the exit and entry parts of the skip. In this case, because they were extending the re-entry but not actually skipping out, P66 was not invoked and instead P65 led directly to P The crew were also warned that they would not be in a full-lift heads-down attitude when they entered P Two of the E-1s were designated as "air boss" while the third acted as a communications relay aircraft.

Two of the Sea Kings carried divers and recovery equipment. The third carried photographic equipment, and the fourth carried the decontamination swimmer and the flight surgeon. This was observed by the helicopters. The divers then passed biological isolation garments BIGs to the astronauts, and assisted them into the life raft. The possibility of bringing back pathogens from the lunar surface was considered remote, but NASA took precautions at the recovery site.

The astronauts were rubbed down with a sodium hypochlorite solution and Columbia wiped with Betadine to remove any lunar dust that might be present. The astronauts were winched on board the recovery helicopter. BIGs were worn until they reached isolation facilities on board Hornet. The raft containing decontamination materials was intentionally sunk. After touchdown on Hornet at After Nixon departed, Hornet was brought alongside the 5-short-ton 4.

It was then attached to the MQF with a flexible tunnel, allowing the lunar samples, film, data tapes and other items to be removed. The astronauts arrived at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Columbia was taken to Ford Island for deactivation, and its pyrotechnics made safe. In accordance with the Extra-Terrestrial Exposure Law , a set of regulations promulgated by NASA on July 16 to codify its quarantine protocol, [] the astronauts continued in quarantine.

After three weeks in confinement first in the Apollo spacecraft, then in their trailer on Hornet , and finally in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory , the astronauts were given a clean bill of health.

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Loose equipment from the spacecraft remained in isolation until the lunar samples were released for study. Nixon and Agnew honored each astronaut with a presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The mission uses the Chang'e 4 lander and rover on the lunar surface, with communications supplied by the Queqiao relay satellite above. The Chang'e 4 mission's rover is similar to the Yutu rover that successfully reached the moon on China's Chang'e 3 mission.

The Chang'e 4 rover and lander were backup vehicles for that earlier moon landing. An artist's illustration of China's Chang'e 4 lander on the far side of the moon. Like its rover, Chang'e 4's lander was once a backup vehicle for the successful Chang'e 3 mission.

This CASC graphic shows the major milestones of China's Chang'e 4 moon landing mission on the lunar far side, including an extended cruise time to the moon. Liftoff of China's Chang'e 4 mission to the moon's far side occurred on Dec. The Chang'e 4 spacecraft won't be alone at the moon. Before launching the lander and rover, the China National Space Administration sent the Queqiao relay satellite to the moon to serve as a communications relay for the mission.

Liftoff for Chang'e 4! Chang'e 4 Clears the Tower. Chang'e 4 Far Side Moon Spacecraft. Chang'e 4 Rises into the Sky. Liftoff for China's Chang'e 4 Moon Mission.