The Apollo Missions

Space 2001- Reaching for the Stars
Dudley Museum and Art Gallery exhibition May 26th 2001 to 13th 2001 October
Selected Notes Supporting the Exhibition
Acknowledgements, The text has been drafted and edited by staff at Dudley Museum and Art
Gallery and the Midlands Spaceflight Society.
All photographs included are courtesy of NASA
Beyond the Blue Planet
Fifty years ago space was simply beyond human
reach.
The idea of living in space and setting up bases on
other planets had been only a dream and the subject
of novels. We had no idea or any experience of how
to get there or how to survive if we did.
This is the story of the ongoing quest to explore the
final frontier, and set our footsteps among the stars
Nice picture of the blue planet from space
The Race for Space
The first steps towards spaceflight occurred with the
development of long-range, pilotless flying weapons during
the Second World War (the German V2 rocket of Wernher
Von Braun).
Portrait of Werner Von Braun
The V2 Rocket Bomb launching
The Cold War Years
In the decades that followed the Second World War, the
United States of America and the communist Eastern Europe
countries (chiefly USSR) entered a period of deep mistrust
that we call the ‘Cold War’.
As a result of this political situation, many major advances in
space technology were driven by the objective of developing
the first inter-continental nuclear missile. This gave rise to
what we now call the ‘space-race’ between the east and the
west in order to demonstrate technological and military
superiority.
SPUTNIK- An Unmanned first in Space
The first ever satellite to orbit the Earth was the Soviet built
Sputnik. It was launched in 1957 and was too faint to see with
the naked eye but the rocket that launched it stayed in orbit
and was seen by lots of people. The sputnik satellite
transmitted a radio signal that was picked up on the ground.
Sputnik was designed and constructed by Soviet chief
designer Sergei Korolev. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957
he said ‘The road to the stars is open’. He truly recognised
the beginning of man’s presence in space
Next Steps
After this progress was rapid with a successful launch of US
satellite Explorer 1 in 1958. This discovered the radiation
belts high above us.
Explorer 1 space craft
Shortly afterwards in 1959 the Russians launched Luna 3
which flew past the Moon and sent back the first pictures of
the far side (which can’t be seen from Earth)
Animals in Space
Once unmanned missions had given some indication of what
might be experienced by astronauts and cosmonauts, the
next logical step was to send a living creature into space.
Many animals served their countries by taking pioneering
space flights. Perhaps the most famous is the Russian dog
Laika. She was the first ever passenger in a spacecraft to
orbit the Earth in 1957.
Laika the first Cosmonaut
After Laika other animals were sent into orbit. The Americans
sent Ham and Enos, the first chimps in space, who test flew
the Mercury space craft before Shepard and Glenn 1961.
The first ever creatures to go to the Moon however were
tortoises who travelled on the Russian Zond missions
National Heroes
The struggle for supremacy in space inevitably lead to
courageous individuals becoming national heroes. This
was something that their intensive training had not
prepared them for and which some of the astronauts and
cosmonauts had trouble coming to terms with.
Many individuals deserve recognition for their courage and
achievements, but it is those who were the first to fly in
space, to walk on the moon or to represent their country
on a mission that get the greatest accolade and attention.
Here in the UK it is perhaps the names of Uri Gagarin,
Neil Armstrong and Helen Sharman that we know best
The first human in space
YURI GAGARIN
Perhaps the best known of the public heroes is Yuri Gagarin
for being the first ever human in space in 1961. His epic
journey around the world and into history lasted only 108
minutes and went just once around the world. As the launch
vehicle blasted off he was heard to say ‘Off we go! ‘
He rode into space on top of a converted missile that was first
built to launch an atomic bomb. The scale model in the case
above is a copy of the rocket that launched Yuri into space.
The First American In Space
ALAN SHEPARD
The first American launched into space was Alan Shepard in
1961. In contrast to the flight of Yuri Gagarin, he didn’t even
make one orbit of the Earth. He just flew in an arc over the
ocean like a cannonball from a cannon. However in 1962
John Glenn did orbit the Earth in a Friendship 7 a Mercury
spacecraft.
Immediately after this flight president Kennedy declared that
USA would land a man on the moon before the end of 1969.
The First British Person In Space
HELEN SHARMAN
Helen Sharman became the first Briton to go into space when
she flew to Mir in 1991. Her voyage consisted of eight days in
space on board the space station.
She was doing experiments on the human body in space and
and growing plants in weightless conditions plants as well as
growing crystals.
A Presidents Comments reflect the Fears of
a Nation
The ability of the Russians to put the first animal and first
human into space threatened the USA. This situation is
illustrated in such comments as were issued by future US
president Lyndon B Johnson when he commented in the late
1950’s…..
‘I don’t want to go to sleep by the light of a red
Moon’
This statement echoed the genuine fear by the USA that the
Soviet Union would build a base on the Moon and dominate
space.
It made the Americans more determined to put the first man
on the moon, and so began the era of Apollo.
The Apollo Missions
The Apollo programme was established
to ensure that the US beat the Soviet
Union to land people on the Moon.
President Kennedy started Apollo and
said the USA would land a person on the
Moon by the end of 1969. When the
USA finally beat the USSR to land
humans on the Moon the USSR
pretended it had never been in the race
to land on the Moon. The true story
came out publicly in 1989.
Apollo 8
The first humans to journey to
another world, the Moon, were the
crew of Apollo 8 at Christmas 1968.
They orbited the Moon for a day but
didn’t land because their landing
craft (the Lunar Module) had not
been finished at the time of the
mission.
The crew of Apollo 8 were the first people to appreciate how
small and delicate our planet was when they saw it from the
Moon. A blue-green ball in the black vastness of space above
the lifeless, airless Moon.
Apollo 11
Probably the most significant and
best-remembered mission of all is
that of Apollo 11 when humanity
finally set foot on another world.
They did this with a craft that had
less computing power on board
than we would have today in a
cheap pocket calculator.
In fact Apollo 11’s lunar Module landed 6 km (4 miles) off
target and with less than 30 seconds of fuel left. Neil
Armstrong had to take the controls to avoid the computer
crashing them into a crater. But their skills made it a
successful and safe mission. As the lunar module landed on
the surface of the moon on the 20th of July 1969 at 9.18 pm
UK time, Neil Armstrong announced to a waiting world
‘Tranquillity Base here, the eagle has landed’ . A phrase
which brought huge relief and resulted in global celebrations.
Apollo 13
The Apollo missions were not without
incident.
One of the best-recorded
incidents was that of Apollo 13 on its
way to the Moon in 1970. As the
oxygen tanks on board were being
stirred on the way out to the Moon a
huge explosion occurred which blew out
a section of the side of the spacecraft.
What immediately followed was a desperate fight by the crew
and mission control on Earth to save the lives of the crew.
Discipline, courage, dedication and ingenuity saw them safely
returned to Earth. This resulted in a major redesign of certain
systems on board the future Apollo spacecraft.
This mission coined immortal phrases that have since been
used by Hollywood in their dramatic film version of this
mission called Apollo 13. One such phrase was uttered by
Commander Jim Lovell when the incident happened aboard
the spacecraft, he said
‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’ .
Apollo 17
The last Apollo mission was Apollo 17
in 1972 (29 years ago). This saw the
last person (so far) to walk on the
Moon. This was Gene Cernan. His
words on departure were,
‘We leave as we came, and
godwilling as we shall return, with
peace and hope for all mankind‘.
Apollo – A Summary
The Apollo missions were the pinnacle of exploration of new
worlds by people and will always stand as testimony to
humanity’s vision and ingenuity. Sadly, probably the most
interesting exploration of the Moon’s surface was done on the
last 3 Apollo flights but the TV companies and their viewers
had lost interest by then.
The Moon retains some parts of these missions. Some
equipment was left on the Moon to monitor moonquakes.
There are flags and discarded items including lunar rovers,
golf balls, TV cameras, a falcon feather,a geological hammer
and many other items.
And there are footprints and tracks left by the men that
explored the surface. These too will remain in the regolith
(dusty lunar soil) for millions of years because there is no rain
or wind on the Moon to destroy them.
Lunar Real-Estate
In light of the landings on the Moon and the reality of future
exploration and moonbases, the issue of ownership of the
moon has been raised. This has even resulted in internet
auctions of plots of the moon by companies on Earth within
the last twelve months! A United Nations treaty says however
that no country can claim objects like the Moon for itself. So
neither the USA nor the USSR could “own” the Moon.
The Shuttles
The end of the Apollo programme saw the start of work using
the space shuttle. This was brought into service as a vehicle
to service to take cargo into space (launch satellites) The
long term vision was to provide materials to construct a space
station.
It was important with the increased
number of flights anticipated that as
much of the vehicle should be reusable
as possible. The shuttle was developed
over a period of 9 years and undertook
its first flight in 1981. Since its first flight
in that year it has principally been
employed for the deployment of
satellites.
However since 1998 it has also begun to work on the
International Space Station, the work for which it was
originally devised!
Staying in Space
After the Moon-race of the 1960s attention turned to building
homes and laboratories in space where people could live and
work. These space stations were to be places where
astronauts and cosmonauts would study the Earth, Sun and
stars; the human body in space and to carry out experiments
in weightlessness.
The first space station was the Soviet Salyut-1 in 1971. The
second space station was the American Skylab but the most
long-lived was the Soviet Mir.
Salyut
Although many worldwide space agencies, including Russia's, are
devoting their energies these days to building the International
Space Station, it was the Soviet Union that orbited the first space
station in 1971. It took nearly two years for the United States to
match with its Skylab what the U.S.S.R. had achieved with Salyut
1.
Though Salyut 1 had to be discarded on October 11, 1971, for the
next 15 years the Soviets produced several successor stations up
to Salyut 7. That pioneering experience paved the way for the
1986 launch of Mir a station with six docking ports.
Skylab
SKYLAB,
America's
first
experimental space station. Skylab
was designed for long duration
missions. This proved that humans
could live and work in space for
moderate periods. It also vastly
increased our knowledge of the sun
due to its onboard equipment
The Skylab space station was launched May 14, 1973, from the
NASA Kennedy Space Centre by a huge Saturn V launch vehicle,
(the moon rocket of the Apollo Space Program).
The empty Skylab spacecraft returned to Earth July 11,1979
scattering debris over the Indian Ocean and the sparsely settled
region of Western Australia.
.
Mir
The Mir space station was launched in 1986 and had visiting
robot supply craft every few months with fresh supplies for the
cosmonauts onboard. The air and water on Mir were recycled.
Oxygen to breath was made from Mir’s toilet waste.
It was in space for 15 years and during
this time carried a Russian medical
doctor called Valery Poliakov.
He
spent 14 months in space on the Mir
space station to prove that humans
could fly to Mars and back in
weightless conditions without major
health problems.
Cosmonauts from many countries have visited Soviet space
stations – including India, Vietnam, Cuba and even the UK.
Britain’s Helen Sharman became our only space traveller so
far with a 1991 trip to the Mir space station – unless you count
NASA astronaut Michael Foale, who has dual BritishAmerican nationality.
Mir burned up under control over the Pacific Ocean in March
2001.
The International Space Station
A partnership of nations from around the globe is preparing to
launch the largest and most complex structure ever placed in
orbit.
The International Space Station will be assembled in space from
dozens of large parts and thousands of smaller ones – including
solar panels, radiators and modules.
• The International Space Station will have a mass of about
900,000 pounds (460 tons) when it's completely assembled.
• The station will measure 361 feet end-to-end.
• The project is so complex that no one nation could tackle it
alone. Sixteen nations – the U.S., Canada, Japan, Russia,
Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the
United Kingdom signed the document approving its
construction
(though the UK is providing no money or any other formal
involvement in ISS!)
There will be up to 7 laboratories onboard. Scientists will study
the human body, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and try
to make things that can’t be made in gravity down here on Earth.
Space Station Facts
• Space stations orbit the Earth at about 400 km (250 miles)
high. That’s closer to Dudley than either Glasgow in
Scotland or Penzance in Cornwall!
• Space stations go once around the Earth in about one and
a half hours.
• The crew of space stations see one sunrise and one sunset
every 90 minutes.
• The inside of the international space station is as big as a
jumbo jet.
• The outside of the international space station is as big as two
football pitches
The human body in space
The work done on board space craft and space stations has
allowed us to see how the human body copes with short, medium
and long term spaceflight. It has shown that it takes a few days to
get used to being weightless. There are many problems that can
occur when the body is in weightless conditions for long periods
of time and then returns to full gravity conditions. Some of these
are:Many people feel sick during their first day in space.
Muscles and bones waste away in weightlessness without
constant exercise. It’s like spending your life in bed without
ever getting up.
Space is full of radiation from the Sun and from deep space
sources. It is harmful to the body if you are exposed to too
much radiation. There is natural radiation on Earth and many
of us get X-rays from the doctor or dentist – these are forms
of radiation.
You grow taller and weigh nothing at all in weightlessness.
Your legs get thinner but you get a little bit fatter around the
middle.
Your face changes appearance on the first day in space.
You feel as though you are congested – like you have a bad
cold.
You can make artificial gravity to avoid some of these problems –
by spinning a spacecraft that is built like a giant playground
round-about.
Space food
If you are cramped in a pressurised small space ship which has to
be as lightweight as possible, and you have no gravity to hold
things down, you can’t really prepare nice cooked meals.
Among the many tasks Glenn had to perform while in orbit were
the first American space experiments in eating food in the
weightless conditions of Earth orbit. His experience would help
design space food systems. Glenn found that eating in space was
relatively easy and once the food reached the mouth, there was
no problem in swallowing.
Other Mercury astronauts following John Glenn ate bite-sized
cubes, freeze dried foods, and food paste in aluminium
toothpaste-type tubes. In the Gemini missions eating in space
became more normal.
Dried foods that could be made edible by adding water were
enclosed in plastic containers or tubs To rehydrate the dry food,
water was injected into the pack through the nozzle of a water
gun. After squeezing and kneading the contents the food became
a puree and was squeezed through a tube into the astronaut's
mouth.
An Astronaut’s Menu
Early astronauts had such food choices as shrimp cocktail,
chicken and vegetables, butterscotch pudding, and apple sauce,
and were able to select meal combinations themselves.
By the time of the Apollo program, the quality and variety of food
increased. Apollo astronauts were first to have hot water, which
made rehydrating dried foods easier and improved the food's
taste. These astronauts were also the first to use the "spoon
bowl," a plastic container that could be opened and its contents
eaten with a spoon .
The astronaut’s menu got much more interesting on the Skylab
where 72 different food items were able to be stored. It had a
freezer and refrigerator, a convenience no other space vehicle
offered.
Destination mars
Now that man has reached the Moon we have turned our
attentions to Mars. There has been much talk of human
missions to Mars within the next 30 years.
The red planet has always held our fascination and several
robotic missions like the Viking (1976) and Pathfinder (1997)
landers have given us spectacular images of the surface of
the planet, but we would still like to get onto the surface and
bring back actual samples to Earth for detailed study.
Making the Journey
It’s only a 3 day flight to the Moon but it’s a minimum of 6
months on a flight to Mars and the same to get back. This
has major implications for the health and well-being of anyone
attempting to go there. Not only would the body suffer in the
long weightless conditions but the mind suffers too with only
the same company for more than a year and none of the
sights, smells, tastes and noises of Earth that we know so
well.
Conditions on the Red Planet
The spacecraft that have travelled to Mars have shown us
that Mars is much smaller than Earth (its about the same size
as all the land on the Earth leaving out the seas).
It is a freezing desert with dust storms. It has no surface
water (although in the past it did) and no ozone layer to
protect life there. There is no oxygen in the atmosphere which
is mainly carbon dioxide so you can’t breath the air on Mars.
Mars does have weather sytems. We have seen clouds and
mists. It has frost and polar ice caps but even the snow is
carbon dioxide (“dry ice”) – the material used to make special
fog effects on stage at pop concerts.
So Mars is not a very welcoming place for humans but it is the
most hospitable of all the planets in the solar system, and the
most like Earth!
Landscape Features on The Red Planet
The landscape of Mars is quite impressive. It has extinct
volcanoes up to three times the height of Mount Everest
(rising 24km or 15miles above the surrounding lava flows). It
has canyons that make the Grand Canyon in the USA look
tiny. One would stretch from Birmingham to New York or
Birmingham to Pakistan.
There are lots of features on Mars that look like running water
made them. But the water must have disappeared a very
long time ago because there are lots of craters on Mars that
have never been washed away since they formed.
That tells us that the surface hasn’t changed very much in
hundreds of millions of years.
Life on Mars
Astronomers once thought there was life on Mars – plants
growing and creatures that built huge canals to carry water
from the polar ice caps to farms. The most famous story about
Martians is H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” from 1898.
The spaceship landers have shown us that the conditions that
now exist on the surface of Mars could not support life as we
know it here on Earth. There is no free water at the surface
and the atmosphere is not like Earth’s (that is, it has no
Oxygen or other gases that are produced by living things like
plants).
The fact that water once ran on Mars might mean that life
once did exist on Mars, millions of years ago. A recent
meteorite that came from Mars had what looked like tiny fossil
bacteria in it. So maybe life did begin there but died out like
the dinosaurs before it could take over the planet.
The famous martian meteorite that possibly contains microscopic fossils of
bacteria which may once have lived on Mars. What do you think?
The Pathfinder and Sojourner
The Mars Pathfinder mission sent a probe directly to a landing
site on the red planet without entering Mars orbit. It touched down
on Mars safely on July 4, 1997 assisted by a parachute to slow its
descent through the thin Martian atmosphere and a giant system
of airbags to cushion the impact.
The rover "Sojourner" is a six-wheeled vehicle which is controlled
From Earth using images obtained by both the rover and the
lander itself.
Pathfinder’s Achievements
Pathfinder and sojourner were a stunning success. They returned
a very large number of photographs and huge amount of data.
They considerably outlived their design lives. .
From landing until the final data transmission on September 27,
1997, Mars Pathfinder returned 2.3 billion bits of information. This
included more than 16,500 images from the lander and 550
images from the rover. It also provided more than 15 chemical
analyses of rocks and soil and extensive data on winds and other
weather factors.
Findings from the investigations carried out by scientific
instruments on both the lander and the rover suggest that Mars
was at one time in its past warm and wet, with water existing in its
liquid state and a thicker atmosphere.
The Landing Site of The Pathfinder
The landing site, an ancient flood plain in Mars’ Northern
Hemisphere known as Ares Vallis, is among the rockiest parts of
Mars. It was chosen because scientists believed it to be a
relatively safe surface to land on and one that contained a wide
variety of rocks deposited during a catastrophic flood.
Mars Missions Summary
So far there have been 10 recent robot missions to Mars all
launched since 1975. However only four of these were
intended to land on the surface. Of these four, 3 were
successful (viking 1 & 2 1976 , and the pathfinder lander
1997). The Mars Polar lander failed (probably crashed) in
1999.
There is still no US or Russian project to land humans on
Mars.
Such a project has been designed since the 1960s by both
countries but there is no money to build the project yet. If it
does happen many countries will be involved.
A telescope above the clouds-Hubble
Beyond the Moon and even
Mars there are other worlds
to be explored and perhaps
someday visited. The cost of
sending space probes to all
the planets and moons in our
own solar system to get even
a brief look would be
enormous. A much better
option would be to have a
very clear view from Earth
To do this you need to be
above
the
Earth’s
atmosphere and you need
the
very
best
optical
technology.
The
Hubble
space
telescope was originally designed in the 1970s and launched
in 1990. Hubble orbits 600 Kilometres above Earth. It has
been so successful that it is used by scientists 24 hours a
day. It uses precision targeting systems, powerful optics, and
state-of-the-art instruments provide stunning views of both the
planets and deep space.
Hubbles vital statistics
The Hubble Space Telescope has proved to be one of the most
versatile pieces of space technology ever to be put into space
despite its difficult start. Up untill March 2000, the Hubble space
telescope had:
• Taken more than 330,000 separate
observations.
• Observed more than 25,000 astronomical
targets.
• Created a data archive of over 7.3
terabytes (that ís like completely filling a
large hard drive in a PC every day for 10
years).
• Provided data for more than 2,600
scientific papers.
• Travelled about 1.5 billion miles (nearly the
distance from Earth to Uranus) as it circles
the Earth about every 97 minutes.
• Received more than 93 hours of on-orbit
improvements in three successful servicing
missions.
With Hubble we are able to see further into space and
therefore farther back in time than ever before and we can
analyse the light in many different ways to tell us all sorts of
things about how stars and planets form.
The Earth in peril
Most of the craters on the Moon and other planets are due to
meteorites and other objects from space crashing into them at
huge speeds ranging between 10 and 70 km per second
(7 to 50 miles per second ) But even 1km/sec is 2,200 mph!
That's a lot of energy!
The Barringer crater, Arizona, USA
One of the craters on Mars
The Earth has also had thousands of massive impacts of
meteorites, comets and asteroids. The Earth’s surface should
therefore look like the that of the Moon or Mercury but we
have a very active planet with seas, volcanoes and
earthquakes which can quickly wash them away or remove all
trace.
We know that many times in the distant past lots of creatures
on planet Earth died out. This may have been be partly due to
asteroids and comets hitting the Earth.
In 1994 we watched as 22 chunks of comet Shoemaker-Levy9 smashed into the planet Jupiter from space. Imagine what
would have happened if they had hit Earth instead!
The Scale of the Danger
A very large number of meteors and meteorites enter the Earth's
atmosphere every day. It has been estimated that this amounts
to greater than a hundred tons of materials from space in a typical
day.
Most of these are tiny grains of dust, just a few milligrams each.
They give us a bright flash of a shooting star as they burn up in
the atmosphere. We call these shooting stars or meteors.
Occasionally however much larger ones crash to Earth, reaching
the surface to become meteorites. The largest meteorite ever
recorded is that found at Hoba, in Namibia weighing 60 tons, but
there is no doubt that much larger ones have hit the Earth in the
past.
Large Impacts in the last 100 years
Believe it or not, there have been at least 2 small asteroids or
comets which have hit Earth in the 1900s and created huge
destruction in the areas where they hit. Luckily they hit remote
parts of the world.
These were :– Russia (Tunguska) in 1908 and the jungle of
Brazil in the 1930s. At Tunguska vast areas of trees were
flattened in all directions.
If an object the size of a small comet or asteroid was
approaching us now, we might not have much warning. We
are now looking for Near Earth Objects like large asteroids.
But only the things that are fairly easy to see. We are slowly
detecting all the dangerous asteroids that might hit us in the
future – but we have a long way to go yet.
Playing in space - space tourism
This year (2001) has witnessed the first space tourism. The
first space tourist was US businessman Dennis Tito who flew
to the new International Space Station. This may open the
way to commercial charter flights to space at some point in
the not-to-distant future.
The prospect of space tourism has captured the imagination
of many. The X-Prize will be awarded to the first private craft
to carry tourists into space. In the yaer 2001, there are 20
groups competing to be the first to do this including the craft
Ascender, Green Arrow and Thunderbird from the UK.
Spaceflight and our daily lives
The quest to explore space has initiated and driven major
technological change that has changed the world for
everyone.
Viewing the Earth from space has shown us how small and
fragile the planet is. It has allowed us to observe how the
environment of the planet is affected by human activities. It
has allowed mass global communication via satellites in Earth
orbit
Satellites orbiting 36,000 km (22,500 miles) up beam TV
programs all over the world – like BskyB and Satellites will
soon be launched to give everyone the chance to have ultrafast internet computer links.
PLANET WATCHING
The technology to look down on the blue planet from Earth
orbit continues to improve. Spy satellites can now read
newspaper headlines and car number plates from space.
Smile – you’re on candid camera! Spy satellites can see all of
us from space if they want to. Maybe Big brother is watching
you!
Just a few of the applications of the technology are listed
below.
Satellites now watch the ozone hole in the Antarctic and
a possible ozone hole over the Arctic.
They watch signs of climate change and give warnings of
floods, hurricanes and melting glaciers.
Satellites watch for signs of pollution and what is causing
it.
Satellites can watch how much of the rain-forest is
vanishing each year.