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Space exploration became a reality 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 it 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 an important announcement. The U.S. had set the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the Moon before the end of the decade. The program was called Project Apollo, after the Roman and Greek god of sunlight. According to legend, he drove a brilliant golden chariot across the sky.
◀ The quest to land Americans on the Moon was inspired by the Cold War. That was a tense long-term 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! After their initial successes, the Soviets had many failed attempts to reach the Moon. At left is the launch of an unmanned Soviet rocket, which blew up shortly after takeoff.
Once the decision was made to go to the Moon, the first question was how to 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 gigantic 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 propelled the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the Moon. ▶
◀ Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the Moon, 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 haul experiments across the Moon. Commander Alan Shepard also carried a golf club and two golf balls and took several swings. He exclaimed that the second ball went “miles and miles and miles” in the weak lunar gravity. In reality, it flew 400 yards, or four times the length of a football field. Still, that is much farther than it would have traveled on Earth.
◀ Apollos 15, 16, and 17 each carried a battery-operated car, called a lunar rover. This vehicle enabled the astronauts to travel several miles on the Moon. To lighten the load for the trip home, all three rovers were left on the Moon.
The last Apollo mission landed in mountainous highlands on the edge of the Sea of Serenity. The astronauts were shocked to find orange-colored soil. They later learned it was due to the presence of tiny spheres of volcanic glass. The spheres had been laid down billions of years ago, when volcanic fire fountains erupted across the valley. ▶
◀ The Apollo 17 astronauts left this aluminum plaque when they departed.
