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Space exploration became real on October 4, 1957.
That was when the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite into orbit around Earth. It was called Sputnik I and was the size of a basketball. This feat made the United States determined to beat the Soviets in the race to explore space.
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a big announcement. The U.S. had set the bold and exciting goal of sending an American to the Moon before the end of the decade. The program was called Project Apollo. It was named after the Roman and Greek god of sunlight. According to legend, Apollo drove a shiny golden chariot across the sky.
◀ The quest to land Americans on the Moon was driven by the Cold War. That was a long, tense conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets shocked the world by successfully launching Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite. In April 1961, they put the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Americans felt they had to catch up, and the “space race” to the Moon was on! The Soviets won some big early successes. But after that they had many failed attempts to reach the Moon. At left is the launch of an unmanned Soviet rocket, which blew up shortly after takeoff.
The U.S. had decided to go to the Moon. The first question was, how do we get there? NASA built the largest rocket ever, Saturn V, to carry Apollo spacecraft and crew. (A Saturn V was built to launch each Apollo mission.) The huge rocket stood 363 feet tall. It could lift 125 tons into space. The first unmanned test flight was in 1967. Pictured is the launch of the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the Moon. ▶
◀ Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the Moon. He did that on July 20, 1969, five months before Kennedy’s deadline. As he stepped off the lunar lander onto the Moon’s surface, Armstrong said: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
▲ On the Apollo 14 mission, astronauts used a small cart to carry experiments across the Moon. Commander Alan Shepard also brought a golf club and two golf balls. He took several swings. He exclaimed that the second ball went “miles and miles and miles” in the weak lunar gravity. It really flew only 400 yards, or four times the length of a football field. Still, that’s way farther than it would have traveled on Earth!
◀ Apollos 15, 16, and 17 each carried a battery-operated car called a lunar rover. It let the astronauts travel for miles across the Moon. To lighten the load for the trip home, all three rovers were left on the Moon.
The last Apollo mission landed in rocky highlands on the edge of the Sea of Serenity. The astronauts were shocked to find orange-colored soil. They later found out the color came from tiny spheres of volcanic glass. Billions of years ago, volcanic fire fountains burst across the valley. That’s when the glass spheres were laid down. ▶
◀ The Apollo 17 astronauts left behind this aluminum plaque.
