The Apollo missions to the moon were the first time that Man stepped foot on the moon. Currently, it’s also the only time. 12 men, over the span of 17 missions would walk on the moon.
In this post, I’m going to skim over the missions, since talking in detail about all of them would make this an extremely long post. I will only talk about flights that sent people to the Moon, not including tests on Earth or in Earth orbit, or un-manned flights, since that would also make this post very long. I will also talk about Apollo 13, even though it didn’t fully complete it’s main objectives. I will also talk about missions that went into orbit around the moon, without landing on it.
This will still make the post quite big, so I’m splitting it into two parts.
Here is the list of missions that I will talk about in this post:
- Apollo 8
- Apollo 10
- Apollo 11
- Apollo 12
Again, I will only glance over each mission. I will attach more sources at the bottom for anyone who want’s these missions in greater detail. These sources also helped me write this blog.
Apollo 8
Apollo 8 was the first manned mission that was in orbit around the moon. Originally, they weren’t going to orbit the moon on this mission, but they thought that by December 1968, the Russians would have sent someone in orbit around the moon. So, 5 weeks before the launch date, they decided that they were gonna send Apollo 8 to orbit the moon. The astronauts successfully performed 10 orbits around the moon before returning to Earth.
Apollo 10
Apollo 10 was the second manned mission to orbit the moon. Apollo 10 helped plan the landing sight for Apollo 11. It was also the first fully crewed mission to the moon, with all of the equipment, and proved that it was possible to bring all of that to the moon.
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 is probably the most famous of the Apollo missions. It was the first time a human being had stepped on the moon. It was also the first time a human had stepped foot on a celestial body besides Earth. Neil Armstrong and Edward ‘Buzz’ Aldrin walked on the Moon for around 2 and a half hours. The first words spoken on the moon were, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Most of us have probably heard that. While Neil and Buzz were on the surface, astronaut Michael Collins stayed in the Command Module, that was orbiting the moon.
Apollo 12
Apollo 12 was similar to Apollo 11, but it had different objectives, and had 2 EVAs per astronaut. They also improved the landing of the LM, when compared to Apollo 11, which couldn’t land on the pre-planned landing spot, because of moon boulders. During launch, the Saturn V was struck by lightning twice, but luckily, mission control helped the crew to fix it, and the mission continued. In the mission, they went to a moon probe called ‘Surveyor’, that was left there 2 and a half years earlier, and brought back a few parts of it. Apollo 12 also helped in finding out how the moon formed, and it’s history.
I’m going to talk about Apollo 13–17 in the next part of this series.
Resources that either helped me, and would provide greater detail than me:
- https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_08a_Summary.htm
- https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_10a_Summary.htm
- https://history.nasa.gov/apollo/apo11.html
- https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_12a_Summary.htm
- https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfd0oC3eFWw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq8cyvmJMNQ