Apollo Remastered: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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Thirty-two astronauts were assigned to fly missions in the Apollo program. Twenty-four of these left Earth's orbit and flew around the Moon between December 1968 and December 1972 (three of them twice). Half of the 24 walked on the Moon's surface, though none of them returned to it after landing once. One of the moonwalkers was a trained geologist. Of the 32, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed during a ground test in preparation for the Apollo 1 mission. [58] Apollo 11 crew, from left: Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin Lunar Impact "Lunar Missions 1958 through 1965" (PDF). Nasa History Series . Retrieved 9 September 2009. Still frame from a video transmission, taken moments before Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto the surface of the Moon, at 02:56 UTC on 21 July 1969. An estimated 500million people worldwide watched this event, the largest television audience for a live broadcast at that time. [1] [2] Jones, Andrew (5 October 2021). "1,000 days on the moon! China's Chang'e 4 lunar far side mission hits big milestone". Space.com . Retrieved 25 August 2022.

In a frozen vault in Houston sits the original NASA photographic film of the Apollo missions. For half a century, almost every image of the Moon landings publicly available was produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals. I have always enjoyed taking photographs too. I guess I was somewhere between a serious amateur and a semi-professional for a time, but since then I’ve switched my focus to remastering film. Have you always been interested in the Apollo missions? Apollo 5 (AS-204) was the first uncrewed test flight of the LM in Earth orbit, launched from pad 37 on January 22, 1968, by the Saturn IB that would have been used for Apollo 1. The LM engines were successfully test-fired and restarted, despite a computer programming error which cut short the first descent stage firing. The ascent engine was fired in abort mode, known as a "fire-in-the-hole" test, where it was lit simultaneously with jettison of the descent stage. Although Grumman wanted a second uncrewed test, George Low decided the next LM flight would be crewed. [98] On 14 December 2013 at 13:12 UTC [58] Chang'e 3 soft-landed a rover on the Moon. This was China's first soft landing on another celestial body and world's first lunar soft landing since Luna 24 on 22 August 1976. [59] The mission was launched on 1 December 2013. After successful landing, the lander release the Yutu rover, which moved 114 meters before being immobilized due to system malfunction. But the rover was still operational until July 2016. [60] Chang'e 4 (China) Chinese Chang'e 4 lander on the surface of far side of the Moon Yutu-2 rover deployed by Chang'e 4 lander From 1961 through 1967, Saturn launch vehicles and Apollo spacecraft components were tested in uncrewed flights.For the program to succeed, its proponents would have to defeat criticism from politicians both on the left (more money for social programs) and on the right (more money for the military). By emphasizing 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 planned. Dunn, Marcia (18 April 2014). "NASA's Moon-Orbiting Robot Crashes Down as Planned". ABC News . Retrieved 18 April 2014. Apollo 9 Mission Report (PDF) (Report). NASA. May 1969. MSC-PA-R-69-2 . Retrieved September 29, 2017. Three different designs of Pioneer lunar probes were flown on three different modified ICBMs. Those flown on the Thor booster modified with an Able upper stage carried an infrared image scanning television system with a resolution of 1 milliradian to study the Moon's surface, an ionization chamber to measure radiation in space, a diaphragm/microphone assembly to detect micrometeorites, a magnetometer, and temperature-variable resistors to monitor spacecraft internal thermal conditions. The first, a mission managed by the United States Air Force, exploded during launch; all subsequent Pioneer lunar flights had NASA as the lead management organization. The next two returned to Earth and burned up upon reentry into the atmosphere after achieved maximum altitudes of around 110,000 kilometres (68,000mi) and 1,450 kilometres (900mi), far short of the roughly 400,000 kilometres (250,000mi) required to reach the vicinity of the Moon. Dates are landing dates in Coordinated Universal Time. Except for the Apollo program, all soft landings were uncrewed.

Hoshino, Takeshi; Ohtake, Makiko; Karouji, Yuzuru; Shiraishi, Hiroaki (May 2019). "Current status of a Japanese lunar polar exploration mission". Archived from the original on 25 July 2019 . Retrieved 25 July 2019. Wiesner kept up the pressure, even making the disagreement public during a two-day September visit by the President to Marshall Space Flight Center. Wiesner blurted out "No, that's no good" in front of the press, during a presentation by von Braun. Webb jumped in and defended von Braun, until Kennedy ended the squabble by stating that the matter was "still subject to final review". Webb held firm and issued a request for proposal to candidate Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) contractors. Wiesner finally relented, unwilling to settle the dispute once and for all in Kennedy's office, because of the President's involvement with the October Cuban Missile Crisis, and fear of Kennedy's support for Webb. NASA announced the selection of Grumman as the LEM contractor in November 1962. [48] Main article: List of Apollo astronauts Apollo 1 crew: Ed White, command pilot Gus Grissom, and Roger ChaffeeSuccessful Fra Mauro landing. Broadcast first color TV images from lunar surface (other than a few moments at the start of the Apollo 12 moonwalk.) Conducted first materials science experiments in space. Conducted two surface EVAs. A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month period starting 20 July 1969, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 with Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17. Cernan was the last man to step off the lunar surface. Breaking the six-year string of failures in U.S. attempts to photograph the Moon at close range, the Ranger 7 mission was viewed as a national turning point and instrumental in allowing the key 1965 NASA budget appropriation to pass through the United States Congress intact without a reduction in funds for the Apollo crewed Moon landing program. Subsequent successes with Ranger 8 and Ranger 9 further buoyed U.S. hopes. The U.S. was not able to reach the moon with the Pioneer and Ranger programs, with fifteen consecutive U.S. uncrewed lunar missions from 1958 to 1964 failing their primary photographic missions. [15] [16] However, Rangers 4 and 6 successfully repeated the Soviet lunar impacts as part of their secondary missions. [17] [18]