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Moon landing

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Space transport

   The first moon landing by a human was that of American Neil Armstrong,
   commander of the Apollo 11 mission, accompanied by Buzz Aldrin. On July
   20, 1969, while their teammate Michael Collins controlled the command
   module Columbia, Armstrong landed the lunar module Eagle on the surface
   of the moon at 4:17:42 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. This article covers
   the events immediately surrounding the successful moon landing. For
   more information on the U.S.S.R./U.S. contest to be the first on the
   moon, see space race, and for more information regarding the mission,
   see Project Apollo.

Lunar missions

   The Moon as photographed by the Galileo probe.
   Enlarge
   The Moon as photographed by the Galileo probe.

Unmanned missions

   The Soviet Luna program had launched Luna 1, the first spacecraft to
   fly past the moon on January 4, 1959. Its successor, Luna 2, was the
   first spacecraft to land on the moon, while Luna 3 took the first
   photos of the far side of the moon on October 7, 1959. Luna 9, launched
   by the USSR on February 3, 1966, performed the first "soft landing" on
   the moon; and Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon on
   April 3, 1966.

   The Americans focused their efforts on sending a probe to the moon with
   their Pioneer program. However, three designs of probe on three
   different rocket launchers all failed in a total of ten attempts.

   The robotic Surveyor program was part of the American effort to locate
   a safe site on the moon for a human landing. Five of Surveyor's seven
   missions were successful, helping to find the best target for the
   Apollo astronauts. Apollo 8 carried out the first manned orbit of the
   moon on December 27, 1968, laying the groundwork for placing a man on
   the moon.

First human on the moon

American strategy

   The U.S. moon exploration program originated during the Eisenhower
   administration. In a series of mid-1950s articles in Collier's
   magazine, Wernher von Braun had popularized the idea of a manned
   expedition to the moon to establish a lunar base. A manned moon landing
   posed several daunting technical challenges to the USA and the USSR.
   Besides guidance and weight management, atmospheric re-entry without
   ablative overheating was a major hurdle. After the Soviet Union's
   launch of Sputnik, von Braun promoted a plan for the U.S. Army to
   establish a military lunar outpost by 1965. This idea did not proceed
   because the United States government believed that the potential for
   scientific or military reward failed to justify the expense of such an
   operation.

   After the early Soviet successes, especially Yuri Gagarin's flight,
   U.S. president John F. Kennedy looked for an American project that
   would capture the public imagination. He asked vice president Lyndon
   Johnson to make recommendations on a scientific endeavor that would
   prove U.S. world leadership. The proposals included non-space options
   such as massive irrigation projects to end famine in the Third World.
   Of all the potential space missions to be attempted, it was determined
   that the U.S. would have the best chance of beating the Soviets in a
   race to a moon landing. This is because the Soviets, at the time, had
   more powerful rockets than the United States. Advances in U.S. nuclear
   weapons technology had led to smaller, lighter warheads, and
   consequently, rockets with smaller payload capacities. By comparison,
   Soviet nuclear weapons were much heavier, and the powerful R-7 rocket
   was developed to carry them. More modest potential missions such as
   flying around the moon without landing or establishing a space lab in
   orbit (both were proposed by Kennedy to von Braun) were determined to
   offer too much advantage to the Soviets, since the U.S. would have to
   develop a heavy rocket to match the Soviets. A moon landing, however,
   would offer the best chance of success to the U.S., since both
   countries would have to develop technology from scratch.

   Mindful that the Apollo Program would economically benefit most of the
   key states in the next election, particularly his home state of Texas
   due to NASA's base in Houston, Johnson championed the Apollo program.
   This supported claims, made by Kennedy during the 1960 election, that
   the previous administration had allowed a " missile gap" between the
   U.S. and USSR (though intelligence reports had shown the reverse to be
   true) which had contributed to Kennedy's victory over Richard Nixon.
   The Apollo project allowed continued development of dual-use
   technology. Johnson also advised that for anything less than a lunar
   landing the USSR had a good chance of beating the U.S. For these
   reasons, Kennedy seized on Apollo as the ideal focus for American
   efforts in space. He ensured continuing funding, shielding space
   spending from the 1963 tax cut and diverting money from other NASA
   projects. This dismayed NASA's leader, James E. Webb, who urged support
   for other scientific work.

   In conversation with Webb, Kennedy said:
   Buzz Aldrin poses on the moon, allowing Neil Armstrong to photograph
   both of them using the visor reflection. (NASA)
   Enlarge
   Buzz Aldrin poses on the moon, allowing Neil Armstrong to photograph
   both of them using the visor reflection. (NASA)

          Everything we do ought to really be tied in to getting on to the
          moon ahead of the Russians [...] otherwise we shouldn't be
          spending that kind of money, because I'm not interested in space
          [...] The only justification for [the cost] is because we hope
          to beat [the USSR] to demonstrate that instead of being behind
          by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.^2.

   Whatever he said in private, Kennedy needed a different message to gain
   public support. Later in 1963, Kennedy asked Vice President Johnson to
   investigate the possible technological and scientific benefits of a
   moon mission. Johnson concluded that the benefits were limited but,
   with the help of scientists at NASA, put together a powerful case,
   citing possible medical breakthroughs and interesting pictures of earth
   from space. For the program to succeed, it would have to defeat
   criticism from politicians on the left, who wanted more money spent on
   social programs, and on those on the right, who favored a more military
   project. By emphasising the scientific payoff and playing on fears of
   Soviet space dominance, Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public
   opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33
   percent two years earlier. After Johnson became President in 1963, his
   continuing defense of the program allowed it to succeed in 1969, as
   Kennedy had originally hoped.

Russian strategy

   Meanwhile, the USSR showed more ambivalence about going to the moon.
   Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev did not relish "defeat" by any other
   power, but equally did not relish funding such an expensive project. In
   October 1963 he said that the USSR was "not at present planning flight
   by cosmonauts to the moon", qualifying this statement with his
   insistence that they had not dropped out of the race. Only after
   another year would the USSR fully commit itself to a moon-landing
   attempt.
   Soviet Soyuz rockets like the one pictured above became the first
   reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit.
   Enlarge
   Soviet Soyuz rockets like the one pictured above became the first
   reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit.

   At the same time, Kennedy had suggested various joint programs,
   including a possible moon landing by Soviet and American astronauts and
   the development of better weather-monitoring satellites. Khrushchev,
   sensing an attempt by Kennedy to steal Russian space technology,
   rejected the idea: if the USSR went to the moon, it would go alone.
   Korolev, the RSA's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz
   craft and the N-1 launcher rocket that would have the capability of
   carrying out a manned moon landing. Khrushchev directed Korolev's
   design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing
   Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely
   new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a manned
   cislunar flight in 1966. In 1964 the new Soviet leadership gave Korolev
   the backing for a moon landing effort and brought all manned projects
   under his direction. With Korolev's death and the failure of the first
   Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet moon landing
   program quickly unravelled. The Soviets built a landing craft and
   selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei
   Leonov on the moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures
   of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first
   delay and then cancellation.
   Earthrise, Dec 22, 1968 (NASA) Enlarge
   Earthrise, Dec 22, 1968 (NASA)

Apollo 11 gets there first

   While unmanned Soviet probes did reach the moon before any U.S. craft,
   American Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the lunar
   surface, after landing on July 20, 1969. Commander of the Apollo 11
   mission, Armstrong received backup from command module pilot Michael
   Collins and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin in an event watched by over
   500 million people around the world. Social commentators widely
   recognize the lunar landing as one of the defining moments of the 20th
   century, and Armstrong's words on his first stepping onto the moon's
   surface became similarly memorable:

     That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

   Actual transcript of entire landing is here.

   The astronauts set out an American flag, and Buzz Aldrin was
   photographed saluting it. While many people believe that some
   importance in the planning of the mission was that Armstrong, a
   civilian, was to be the first to set foot on the moon, this is not
   true. One of the original flight plans had the lunar module pilot (Buzz
   Aldrin) coming out first. Also of significance was the inscribed plaque
   unveiled by the astronauts and left affixed to the lunar lander which
   remained on the moon. The sentiment expressed set forth America's
   attitude about the landing and subsequent landings. Signed by Richard
   Nixon, President of the United States the plaque reads: "Here men from
   the planet earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969 AD. We came in
   peace for all mankind" (the plaque is also signed by Neil Armstrong,
   Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin).

Other aspects of the moon landing

   Unlike other international rivalries, the Space Race has remained
   unaffected in a direct way by the desire for territorial expansion.
   After its successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly
   disclaimed the right to ownership of any part of the Moon.

   Some conspiracy theorists still insist that the lunar landing was a
   hoax. These Apollo moon landing hoax accusations flourish in part
   because, while many enthusiasts predicted that moon landings would
   become commonplace, except for the several ensuing Apollo landings in
   the next decade, such predictions have not yet come to pass. Many
   scientists, technicians and space enthusiasts who have commented on the
   accusations have rejected them as baseless. Public opinion polls in the
   United States have shown that a large majority accept the Apollo
   missions as fact, while a notable percentage have at least some doubts
   about them.

   In the 1940s writer Arthur C Clarke forecast that man would reach the
   moon by the year 2000, an idea experts dismissed as rubbish. When Neil
   Armstrong landed in 1969, the United States said Clarke "provided the
   essential intellectual drive that led us to the moon."

   On August 16, 2006 the Associated Press reported that NASA is currently
   missing the original Slow-scan television tapes (which were made before
   the scan conversion for conventional TV) of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.
   Some news outlets have mistakenly reported that the SSTV tapes were
   found in Western Australia, but those tapes were only recordings of
   data from the Apollo 11 Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package.

List of manned moon landings

     * Apollo 11 - July 16, 1969. First manned landing on the Moon, July
       20.
     * Apollo 12 - November 14, 1969. First precise manned landing on the
       Moon.
     * Apollo 14 - January 31, 1971. Alan Shepard, the sole astronaut of
       the Mercury MR-3 mission, walks on the Moon.
     * Apollo 15 - July 26, 1971. First mission with the Lunar Rover
       vehicle.
     * Apollo 16 - April 16, 1972. First landing in the lunar highlands.
     * Apollo 17 - December 7, 1972. Final Apollo lunar mission, first
       night launch, only mission with a professional geologist.

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