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| Mercury | Gemini | Skylab |
On May 25 1961, just twenty days after Alan Shepards fifteen
minute sub-orbital flight, President John F. Kennedy said "I
believe that 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." Eight years later
Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon.
Apollo is without a doubt one of the most amazing
accomplishments of the human species. By the end of 1972,
twenty-four men had travelled a quarter of a million miles
from the Earth to the Moon, three made the trip twice, and
twelve of them walked on the Moon.
Thousands of photographs, hours of video, and about 841
pounds of Moon rock were returned to Earth by the astronauts.
Many scientific experiments, including a laser reflector used
to messure the distance between the Earth and Moon, were left
on the lunar surface and some of them are still used today.
Apollo wasn't all about the Moon though. In 1973 the Skylab
space station was launched on top of a Saturn V rocket, and in
1975 the United States and Russian docked their Apollo/Soyuz
spacecrafts.
Main Objectives
- Land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth
- Gather lunar rocks and soil samples
Earth Orbit Missions
- Apollo 1 *
January 28, 1967
Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White, Roger Chaffee
- Apollo 7
October 11-22, 1968
Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walt Cunningham
- Apollo 9
March 3-13, 1969
James McDivitt, David Scott, Russell Schweickart
Lunar Orbit and Lunar Swingby Missions
- Apollo 8
December 21-27, 1968
Frank Borman, James Lovell, William Anders
- Apollo 10
May 18-26, 1969
Eugene Cernan, John Young, Thomas Stafford
- Apollo 13
April 11-17, 1970
James Lovell, Fred Haise, John Swigert
Lunar Landing Missions
- Apollo 11
July 16-24, 1969
Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin
- Apollo 12
November 14-24, 1969
Charles "Pete" Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean
- Apollo 14
January 31 - February 9, 1971
Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, Edgar Mitchell
- Apollo 15
July 26 - August 7, 1971
David Scott, James Irwin, Alfred Worden
- Apollo 16
April 16-27, 1972
John Young, Thomas K. Mattingly, Charles Duke
- Apollo 17
December 7-19, 1972
Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, Ronald Evans
- Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
July 15-24, 1975
American Crew: Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, Donald Slayton
Russian Crew: Valeriy Nikolayevich Kubasov, Alexei Arhipovich Leonov
*Apollo 1 was intended to be an orbital test of the new Apollo capsule but it was cancelled after a fire on the launch pad killed the three astronauts.
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