25 Facts About Project Apollo

1.

Apollo program, known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which succeeded in preparing and landing the first humans on the Moon from 1968 to 1972.

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2.

Five subsequent Project Apollo missions landed astronauts on the Moon, the last, Project Apollo 17, in December 1972.

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3.

Project Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first crewed flight in 1968.

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4.

Project Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, and Project Apollo 11 was the first crewed spacecraft to land humans on one.

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5.

Project Apollo spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and human spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers.

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6.

Project Apollo knew little about the technical details of the space program, and was put off by the massive financial commitment required by a crewed Moon landing.

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7.

The LOC included an Operations and Checkout Building to which Gemini and Project Apollo spacecraft were initially received prior to being mated to their launch vehicles.

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8.

Seamans's establishment of an ad hoc committee headed by his special technical assistant Nicholas E Golovin in July 1961, to recommend a launch vehicle to be used in the Apollo program, represented a turning point in NASA's mission mode decision.

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9.

Faget's preliminary Project Apollo design employed a cone-shaped command module, supported by one of several service modules providing propulsion and electrical power, sized appropriately for the space station, cislunar, and lunar landing missions.

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10.

NASA's director of flight crew operations during the Apollo program was Donald K "Deke" Slayton, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who was medically grounded in September 1962 due to a heart murmur.

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11.

Deke Slayton, the grounded Mercury astronaut who became director of flight crew operations for the Gemini and Apollo programs, selected the first Apollo crew in January 1966, with Grissom as Command Pilot, White as Senior Pilot, and rookie Donn F Eisele as Pilot.

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12.

Project Apollo 8 was planned to be the D mission in December 1968, crewed by McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart, launched on a SaturnV instead of two Saturn IBs.

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13.

Project Apollo 13 launched Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in April 1970, headed for the Fra Mauro formation.

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14.

Project Apollo was grounded again, for the remainder of 1970 while the oxygen tank was redesigned and an extra one was added.

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15.

Project Apollo 15 had been planned to be the last of the H series missions, but since there would be only two subsequent missions left, it was changed to the first of three J missions.

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16.

Project Apollo 17 was the last of the Project Apollo program, landing in the Taurus–Littrow region in December 1972.

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17.

One important rock found during the Project Apollo Program is dubbed the Genesis Rock, retrieved by astronauts David Scott and James Irwin during the Project Apollo 15 mission.

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18.

The cost of constructing and operating Project Apollo-related ground facilities, such as the NASA human spaceflight centers and the global tracking and data acquisition network, added an additional $5.

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19.

Project Apollo was a massive undertaking, representing the largest research and development project in peacetime.

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20.

All of the U S flags left on the Moon during the Apollo missions were found to still be standing, with the exception of the one left during the Apollo 11 mission, which was blown over during that mission's lift-off from the lunar surface; the degree to which these flags retain their original colors remains unknown.

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21.

Project Apollo program has been called the greatest technological achievement in human history.

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22.

The Apollo project was enabled by NASA's adoption of new advances in semiconductor electronic technology, including metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform and silicon integrated circuit chips in the Apollo Guidance Computer .

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23.

Crew of Project Apollo 8 sent the first live televised pictures of the Earth and the Moon back to Earth, and read from the creation story in the Book of Genesis, on Christmas Eve 1968.

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24.

Project Apollo program affected environmental activism in the 1970s due to photos taken by the astronauts.

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25.

Project Apollo program has been the focus of several works of fiction, including:.

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