The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which succeeded in preparing and landing the first humans on the Moon from 1968 to 1972. It was first conceived in 1960 during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration as a three-person spacecraft to follow the one-person Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third US human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by the two-person Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo.
The John F. Kennedy Space Center, located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laboratory. That agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958. NASA Ames is named in honor of Joseph Sweetman Ames, a physicist and one of the founding members of NACA. At last estimate NASA Ames had over US$3 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a US$860 million annual budget.
The Apollo Lunar Module, originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed spacecraft to operate exclusively in the airless vacuum of space, and remains the only crewed vehicle to land anywhere beyond Earth.
The Langley Research Center, located in Hampton, Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also tested space hardware such as the Apollo Lunar Module. In addition, many of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site. Langley was also considered a potential site for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center prior to the eventual selection of Houston, Texas.
The Constellation program was a crewed spaceflight program developed by NASA, the space agency of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were "completion of the International Space Station" and a "return to the Moon no later than 2020" with a crewed flight to the planet Mars as the ultimate goal. The program's logo reflected the three stages of the program: the Earth (ISS), the Moon, and finally Mars—while the Mars goal also found expression in the name given to the program's booster rockets: Ares. The technological aims of the program included the regaining of significant astronaut experience beyond low Earth orbit and the development of technologies necessary to enable sustained human presence on other planetary bodies.
Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR) is a method for conducting round trip human flights to the Moon, involving the use of space rendezvous to assemble, and possibly fuel, components of a translunar vehicle in low Earth orbit. It was considered and ultimately rejected in favor of lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) for NASA's Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, mainly because LOR does not require a spacecraft big enough to both make the return trip from Earth orbit to splashdown in the ocean, and a soft landing on the lunar surface. Three decades later, it was planned to be used for Project Constellation, until that program's cancellation in October 2010.
Lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) is a process for landing humans on the Moon and returning them to Earth. It was utilized for the Apollo program missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a LOR mission, a main spacecraft and a smaller lunar lander travel to lunar orbit. The lunar lander then independently descends to the surface of the Moon, while the main spacecraft remains in lunar orbit. After completion of the mission there, the lander returns to lunar orbit to rendezvous and re-dock with the main spacecraft, then is discarded after transfer of crew and payload. Only the main spacecraft returns to Earth.
The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) is the official title of a large-scale, system level study released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in November 2005 of his goal of returning astronauts to the Moon and eventually Mars—known as the Vision for Space Exploration. The Constellation Program was cancelled in 2010 by the Obama Administration and replaced with the Space Launch System, later renamed as the Artemis Program in 2017 under the Trump Administration.
The Altair spacecraft, previously known as the Lunar Surface Access Module or LSAM, was the planned lander spacecraft component of NASA's cancelled Constellation program. Astronauts would have used the spacecraft for landings on the Moon, which was intended to begin around 2019. The Altair spacecraft was planned to be used both for lunar sortie and lunar outpost missions. On February 1, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a proposal to cancel the Constellation program, to be replaced with a re-scoped program, effective with the U.S. 2011 fiscal year budget.
A boilerplate spacecraft, also known as a mass simulator, is a nonfunctional craft or payload that is used to test various configurations and basic size, load, and handling characteristics of rocket launch vehicles. It is far less expensive to build multiple, full-scale, non-functional boilerplate spacecraft than it is to develop the full system. In this way, boilerplate spacecraft allow components and aspects of cutting-edge aerospace projects to be tested while detailed contracts for the final project are being negotiated. These tests may be used to develop procedures for mating a spacecraft to its launch vehicle, emergency access and egress, maintenance support activities, and various transportation processes.
The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) was a component of the U.S. NASA Vision for Space Exploration plan. A competition was held to design a spacecraft that could carry humans to the destinations envisioned by the plan. The winning design was the Orion spacecraft.
The Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) is a historic building on Merritt Island, Florida, United States. The five-story structure is in the Industrial Area of NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Its has twin-block facilities that include the crew quarter dormitories for astronauts, suit-up preparations prior to their flights, and the other is a large spacecraft workshop used for manufacturing and checking activities on crewed spacecraft. On January 21, 2000, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, also known as Building 4572 and the Static Test Stand, is a rocket testing facility of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Built in 1957, it was the site where the first single-stage rockets with multiple engines were tested. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985 for its role in the development of the United States space program.
The Rendezvous Docking Simulator, also known as the Real-Time Dynamic Simulator, is a simulator at the Langley Research Center. It was constructed for the Gemini program in Building 1244 and it became operational in June 1963 at a cost of $320,000 and later reconfigured for the Apollo program. The simulator consists of a gantry frame, with an overhead carriage from which test craft were suspended by cables. A gimbal was powered hydraulically and was capable of changing pitch and yaw at a rate of 1 radian per second or roll at 2 radians per second. The gantry also moved like an overhead crane using electric motors and was capable of travelling 210 feet (64 m) longitudinally at up to 20 feet per second (6.1 m/s), 16 feet (4.9 m) laterally at up to 4 feet per second (1.2 m/s) and vertically 45 feet (14 m) at up to 10 feet per second (3.0 m/s).
Pad Abort 1 (PA-1) was a flight test of the Orion Launch Abort System (LAS). PA-1 was the first test in a sequence of atmospheric flight tests known as Orion Abort Flight Test (AFT).
The Virginia Air and Space Science Center is a museum and educational facility in Hampton, Virginia that also serves as the visitors center for NASA's Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base. The museum also features an IMAX digital theater and offers summer aeronautic- and space-themed camps for children.
Orion is a partially reusable crewed spacecraft used in NASA's Artemis program. The spacecraft consists of a Crew Module (CM) space capsule designed by Lockheed Martin and the European Service Module (ESM) manufactured by Airbus Defence and Space. Capable of supporting a crew of six beyond low Earth orbit, Orion can last up to 21 days undocked and up to six months docked. It is equipped with solar panels, an automated docking system, and glass cockpit interfaces modeled after those used in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. A single AJ10 engine provides the spacecraft's primary propulsion, while eight R-4D-11 engines, and six pods of custom reaction control system engines developed by Airbus, provide the spacecraft's secondary propulsion. Although compatible with other launch vehicles, Orion is primarily intended to launch atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with a tower launch escape system.
The RS-18 is a reconfigured version of the Rocketdyne Lunar Module Ascent Engine (LMAE), modified to burn liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane (CH4) for NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) engine testing in 2008.
The Artemis program is a robotic and human Moon exploration program led by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) along with five major partner agencies— the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and the Australian Space Agency (ASA). The Artemis program is intended to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The main parts of the program are the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion spacecraft, the Lunar Gateway space station, and the commercial Human Landing Systems. The program's long-term goal is to establish a permanent base on the Moon to facilitate the feasibility of human missions to Mars.
