Curated category
Apollo program
- Earth orbit rendezvousEarth orbit rendezvous is a concept that shaped the entire architecture of human spaceflight before anyone had set foot on the Moon.
- AS-105Engineers constructed the BP-9A boilerplate spacecraft to mimic the weight and shape of a real Apollo command module. This dummy vessel lacked life support…
- Apollo programThe Apollo program landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969, and roughly 650 million people worldwide watched it happen on television.
- Lost MoonLost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 opens with a premise that sounds like failure. In April 1970, three astronauts set out for the Moon on what was…
- Lunar Receiving LaboratoryThe Lunar Receiving Laboratory stands at the center of one of the most cautious scientific undertakings in history. When NASA's Apollo 11 astronauts splashed…
- Apollo Applications ProgramThe Apollo Applications Program was born in 1966, just three years before any American set foot on the Moon, out of a worry that may surprise you: NASA was…
- S-IVThe S-IV stage carried six RL-10A-3 engines into the sky. Each engine provided 150,000 pounds of thrust. Together they generated a total force of about…
- Vehicle Assembly BuildingThe Vehicle Assembly Building sits on Merritt Island on Florida's Atlantic coast, 50 miles due east of Orlando, and it is so large that clouds can form…
- Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 sits on Merritt Island in Florida, and it has witnessed more of humanity's most ambitious departures from Earth than…
- Lunar orbit rendezvousLunar orbit rendezvous is the technical name for the process that put human beings on the Moon and brought them home alive.
- EarthriseEarthrise is a photograph of Earth taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on the 24th of December, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission.
- Thomas J. Kelly (aerospace engineer)Thomas Joseph Kelly was born on the 14th of June 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in Merrick, a middle-class neighborhood where parents compared their…
- Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control CenterThe Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, is the room where human spaceflight history was made.
- Michoud Assembly FacilityThe Michoud Assembly Facility sits on 832 acres in New Orleans East, and it has spent most of its existence building the largest machines human beings have…
- S-IIThe S-II generated one million pounds of thrust as the second stage of the Saturn V rocket. Five J-2 engines in a quincunx formation burned liquid hydrogen…
- Saturn IBThe Saturn IB carried an odd nickname: engineers called its first stage Cluster's Last Stand. NASA built this launch vehicle for the Apollo program as an…
- Taurus–LittrowTaurus-Littrow is a lunar valley on the near side of the Moon, and in December 1972 it became the last place human beings have ever stood on another world.
- The Blue MarbleThe Blue Marble is a photograph of Earth taken on the 7th of December 1972, by Harrison Schmitt aboard Apollo 17. Shot from roughly 29,400 kilometers above…
- S-ICFive F-1 engines at the base of the S-IC generated 7,750,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. The S-IC was the first stage of the Saturn V rocket.
- S-IVBThe S-IVB, pronounced "S-four-B," is the rocket stage that sent human beings to the Moon. Built by the Douglas Aircraft Company and powered by a single J-2…
- Saturn IWernher von Braun's team at the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency began studying a heavy-lift vehicle in April 1957. They calculated that a rocket with the…
- We choose to go to the MoonOn the 12th of September 1962, John F. Kennedy stood before roughly 40,000 people at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas, on a warm and sunny…
- Stolen and missing Moon rocksStolen and missing Moon rocks are a surprisingly widespread problem, one that has unfolded quietly across decades and dozens of countries.
- Direct ascentDirect ascent was the first method NASA seriously considered for landing astronauts on the Moon. The idea sounds almost brutally simple: build one enormous…
- Harrison StormsHarrison Allen Storms, Jr. was born on the 15th of July 1915, and by the time he died on the 11th of July 1992, just four days before his birthday, he had…
- Wernher von BraunWernher von Braun helped carry humanity to the Moon, yet more people died building his most famous weapon than were ever killed by it.
- A-001A-001 was the second abort test of the Apollo spacecraft. This mission aimed to prove that the launch escape system could safely remove the command module…
- Abe SilversteinAbe Silverstein named the Apollo program after the Greek and Roman god of light and the sun, a choice that would define one of humanity's greatest…
- Trans-lunar injectionA spacecraft performs a trans-lunar injection burn to leave its circular parking orbit around Earth. This large propulsive maneuver uses a chemical rocket…
- Boilerplate (spaceflight)On the 9th of September 1959, a boilerplate spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket. It carried no crew, had no working systems, and…