Category: Moon Landing

On July 5, 1966, the first Apollo orbital mission, AS-203 was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida. It was an uncrewed flight of the vehicle’s second stage, the S-IVB stage (it was the 3rd stage of Saturn V, which carried humans to the Moon), to test it under orbital conditions and to obtain flight information on venting and chill-down systems, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer of propellant tanks, attitude and thermal control system, launch vehicle guidance, and checkout in orbit.

During the fourth orbit, internal pressures built up in the S-IVB stage while a pressure differential test was being performed. The pressures built up well in excess of design values and the stage fragmented. Despite that, all mission objectives were achieved.

In an address to Congress on “Urgent National Needs” on May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States called for America to send astronauts to the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade.

Apollo 10, the fourth crewed mission in the Apollo program (NASA’s project to land humans on the moon), and the second (after Apollo 8) to orbit the Moon was launched on On May 18, 1969.

On April 16, 1972, the huge, 363-feet (110.6 meters) tall Apollo 16 (Spacecraft 113/Lunar Module 11/Saturn V SA-511, see notes 1) space vehicle was launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 12:54 p.m. EST. Crewed by Commander John W. Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke (see notes 2), and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly (see notes 3), it was the tenth crewed mission in the United States Apollo space program, the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem” (see notes 1 below this post) is the now-famous phrase radioed from Apollo 13 to Mission Control upon the catastrophic explosion that dramatically changed the mission. On the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, NASA recognizes the triumph of the mission control team and the astronauts and looks at the lessons learned. The American space agency commemorates the most “successful failure” in the history of space exploration with the video titled “Apollo 13: Houston, We’ve Had a Problem”.