Category: This Day in Science, Technology, Astronomy, and Space Exploration History

“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”.

On November 10, 1970, the uncrewed Luna-17 spacecraft launched (see notes 1) and it delivered Lunokhod 1 to the lunar surface on November 17, 1970. Lunokhod 1 was the world’s first automatic self-propelled laboratory, fully controlled from Earth. With Lunokhod 1’s landing on the Moon, a new stage has begun in the exploration of the Earth’s only natural satellite by automatic devices.

Apollo Flight Journal channel published a detailed video that shows every second of the complete descent and landing of Apollo 11, the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon on July 20, 1969. The video combines data from the onboard computer for altitude and pitch angle (you can see both altitude and pitch angle every second), 16mm film that was shot throughout the descent at 6 frames per second.