After a flight of 195 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds - about 36 minutes longer than planned - Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet. Because of bad weather in the target area, the landing point was changed by about 250 miles.
During the nail biting 12.5 minute descent from lunar orbit, the LM's onboard computer (most critically needed during landing) shut down and recycled 5 times due to an erroneous checklist that had the crew turn on their ship's radar too early resulting in multiple data overloads.
The atmosphere in the Apollo spacecraft was 100% oxygen, at a pressure of five pounds per square inch. The oxygen system constantly added fresh oxygen to the cabin to replenish that breathed by the crew. Carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts was removed by canisters of lithium hydroxide, like this one.
CAPE KENNEDY -- America's first three Apollo astronauts died only 218 feet off the ground Friday night in a blazing explosion inside their space capsule atop its launch pad.
The astronauts used Eagle's ascent stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that propelled Columbia out of the last of its 30 lunar orbits onto a trajectory back to Earth.
So, why haven't they sent humans back to the moon yet? The two primary causes are money and priorities. The race to put people on the moon was sparked in 1962 by US President John F. Kennedy's 'We Choose to Go to the Moon' address, in which he pledged that by the end of the decade, an American would walk on the moon'.
The TLI placed Apollo on a "free-return trajectory" - often illustrated as a figure of eight shape. This course would have harnessed the power of the Moon's gravity to propel the spacecraft back to Earth without the need for more rocket fuel.
To date, only one country has succeeded in landing humans on the moon: the United States of America.
Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were the first of 12 human beings to walk on the Moon. Four of America's moonwalkers are still alive: Aldrin (Apollo 11), David Scott (Apollo 15), Charles Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17).
The mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM).
During the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, astronauts would go to a somewhat private spot on the spaceship, put on the condom-like pouch, and attach a rubber transfer tube with a tank at the end to dispose of their liquid waste. The entire process took a whopping 45 minutes.
Apollo astronauts slept in 'sleep restraints', which were sleeping bags tied to the cabin to stop them floating about. Restraints were placed under the left and right couches and also on top of the right couch. They could be rolled up and stored when not in use.
On March 14, 1968, NASA announced that Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission planned for October 1968, would use a mixed-gas atmosphere of 60% oxygen and 40% nitrogen at a pressure of 16 psi during operations on the launch pad.
Apollo 11 carried the first geologic samples from the Moon back to Earth. In all, astronauts collected 21.6 kilograms of material, including 50 rocks, samples of the fine-grained lunar regolith (or "soil"), and two core tubes that included material from up to 13 centimeters below the Moon's surface.
The command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time. The mission has been referred to as a successful failure, in that all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.
Time was running out. The Apollo 11 lunar module was on its historic descent to the moon's crater-pocked surface on 20 July 1969 when a fuel light blinked on. Still 100ft (30 metres) above the ground, it was not what the astronauts needed. The Eagle's tank was nearly dry.
How many flags are on the Moon? A total of six flags have been planted on the Moon – one for each US Apollo landing.
A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959.
Frank Frederick Borman II (born March 14, 1928) is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, test pilot, and businessman.
Apart from the Apollo 11 flag, which is believed to have been lost, the others were planted during Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. According to images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter during different times of day, shadows in the areas where the flags were planted indicate they're still standing.
What is this? While the United States and China are the only countries to have physically placed flags on the moon, a number of other nations have sent robotic probes to the lunar surface.
The very first nation to reach the surface of the moon was the USSR (Russia), whose unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 impacted the moon' surface on 12 September 1959. While Luna 2 was the first probe to land on the moon, it had been designed to crash-land into the surface (a "hard landing") rather than conduct a soft landing.
The spaceship was pressurised with an on-board oxygen source that enabled the crew to breathe normally. When they were on the Moon, astronauts wore a Portable Life Support System (PLSS), which was the large box on the back of their spacesuits.
Well, because the Moon doesn't have a significant atmosphere like Earth, it does not experience weather, like wind or atmospheric temperature or precipitation like rain and snow.
The Eagle has landed.” At the time of landing, Mission Control thought that the spacecraft had just 17 seconds of fuel left in the descent stage. However, post mission analysis showed that sloshing in the fuel tank during Armstrong's search for a safe landing site caused the fuel gauge to give an inaccurate reading.