The Apollo 11 Mission
The Apollo 11 Mission
It all started with one statement: ''I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.'' President John F. Kennedy said this in a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961. But why was sending a man to the moon so important to the United States? Well, the main reason was the US at the time was behind the Soviet Union in space travel developments, And America in the Cold War era it was in welcomed Kennedy's proposal to leap ahead of the competition. And so, in 1966 after 5 years of work, a team of scientists and engineers from around the world conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission. The main purpose of this was to test the structual integrity of the launch vehicle and spacecraft combination that was proposed. Unfortunetely, tragedy struck the Kennedy Space Center on January 27, 1967. A fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. All three astronauts: Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee were killed. Even with this, …show more content…
On July 16, 1969 at 9:32am EDT, Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were aboard, with Neil being the commander of the mission. The spacecraft traveled 240,000 miles in only 76 hours, entering lunar orbit on July 19. The next day and 1:46pm, Eagle, the lunar module, being manned by Armstrong and Aldrin seperated from the command module. A few hours later, Eagle began its descent towards the Moon, and at 4:17pm, it touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed Mission Control in Huston with the now famous quote: ''The Eagle has
It all started with one statement: ''I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.'' President John F. Kennedy said this in a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961. But why was sending a man to the moon so important to the United States? Well, the main reason was the US at the time was behind the Soviet Union in space travel developments, And America in the Cold War era it was in welcomed Kennedy's proposal to leap ahead of the competition. And so, in 1966 after 5 years of work, a team of scientists and engineers from around the world conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission. The main purpose of this was to test the structual integrity of the launch vehicle and spacecraft combination that was proposed. Unfortunetely, tragedy struck the Kennedy Space Center on January 27, 1967. A fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. All three astronauts: Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee were killed. Even with this, …show more content…
On July 16, 1969 at 9:32am EDT, Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were aboard, with Neil being the commander of the mission. The spacecraft traveled 240,000 miles in only 76 hours, entering lunar orbit on July 19. The next day and 1:46pm, Eagle, the lunar module, being manned by Armstrong and Aldrin seperated from the command module. A few hours later, Eagle began its descent towards the Moon, and at 4:17pm, it touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed Mission Control in Huston with the now famous quote: ''The Eagle has