NASA

Moonwalker

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

Moon Flyer

Buzz Aldrin, Ph.D., a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and former NASA astronaut, was born on January 20, 1930, in Montclair, New Jersey, and is best known as the second person to walk on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. A distinguished graduate of West Point and MIT, where he earned a doctorate in astronautics, Aldrin flew combat missions in the Korean War, shot down two enemy aircraft, and later became a key figure in the Gemini and Apollo programs, setting records for spacewalks and logging nearly 290 hours in space. He received numerous honors, including the Presidential Medal for Freedom, before retiring from NASA and the Air Force in the early 1970s. Since then, Aldrin has authored books, lectured worldwide, and continued advocating for U.S. leadership in space exploration as president of Starcraft Enterprises. Courtesy of NASA.

Apollo 11

"One giant leap..." Eight years and two months after President John F. Kennedy challenged NASA to land a person on the Moon and return him safely to Earth, Apollo 11 launched to fulfill that goal. An estimated 1 million people crammed into Titusville and Cape Canaveral to watch the launch in person while 25 million people in the U.S. and millions more around the world watched on TV or listened to the launch on the radio. The Apollo 11 launch was televised in 33 countries. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin undocking the Eagle lunar lander from the Columbia Command Module and began their descent to the lunar surface. At 20:17:40 UTC on July 20th, 1969, approximately 650 million people, one-fifth of the world population, watched the worldwide, live broadcast as Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon. The event was the most watched TV broadcast at the time and still stands as one of the most watched broadcasts in history. Armstrong and Aldrin privately decided to name the landing site Tranquillity Base given its location inside the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquillity). They did not inform NASA beforehand. The International Astronomical Union, which oversees the naming of places on celestial objects other than Earth, officially recognizes Tranquillity Base as the name of the Apollo 11 landing site. After touchdown, Armstrong became the first person to set foot on another world. After a safe return to Earth, screens in Mission Control played President Kennedy's challenge, followed by the words "TASK ACCOMPLISHED." The U.S. had won the Space Race.

The main Apollo spacecraft was a Command and Service Module designed to take three astronauts to and from the Moon’s orbit and provide access to the lunar lander during missions. After the Moon program ended, Apollo spacecraft flew three crews to the Skylab space station and performed the historic joint U.S.-Soviet mission in 1975.

Apollo

Gemini 12

The final flight of project Gemini succeeding in achieving its last remaining goal: to demonstrate that an astronaut could easily and effectively work outside a spacecraft. Over a two hour spacewalk, Buzz Aldrin proved that the addition of handrails outside the spacecraft and training for the spacewalk underwater made spacewalking easy and efficient. Underwater training is still used today by NASA and Russia for spacewalks. For a time, it appeared Gemini 12 might overlap with the Apollo 1 crew mission. Plans were created for such a dual-program flight. Delays to Apollo 1 ultimately forced NASA to abandon this plan. Splashing down at 19:21 UTC on November 15th, 1966, Gemini 12 brought the program to an end. NASA believed it was ready for the Moon. Two months later, the three member crew of Apollo 1 were killed in a spacecraft fire during a launch pad training exercise. NASA, in fact, was not ready.

Gemini was a two-person spacecraft designed to prove technologies and procedures for the Apollo lunar landings. Crews proved rendezvous and docking as well as transfer from one ship to another via spacewalk were possible. Gemini demonstrated that humans could live and work in space for the length of time needed for a lunar flight.

Gemini

Buzz Aldrin

United States of America

Gemini 12 EVA 1

Gemini 12 EVA 3

Apollo 11 Moonwalk

Gemini 12 EVA 2

Apollo 13

NASA's finest hour. What was supposed to be the third human lunar landing, Apollo 13 suffered a catastrophic failure of its oxygen tanks, leaving the Command Module (called Odyssey) without oxygen. Odyssey was then powered down and the Lunar Module (Aquarius) powered up. The crew took shelter in Aquarius, which had its own oxygen and life support systems. Two never-planned-for or conceived of burns of Aquarius' lunar landing engine took place to bring Apollo 13 quickly around the Moon and back to Earth. However, Aquarius only had enough power, water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide scrubbers for two people for 45 hours -- not the three people it now had to keep alive for several days. Through on-the-fly engineering in Mission Control and the crew ripping apart clothing and procedure manuals, they were able to stretch the use of the carbon dioxide scrubbers to make it back to Earth. They restricted themselves to just 0.2 liters of water per person per day and turned off all nonessential power. Temperatures dropped as low as 3°C. Swinging around the Moon, the Apollo 13 crew reached a maximum distance of 400,171 km from Earth, a record that stands to this day. Because Aquarius had to protect the crew as long as possible, the entire ship had to make the return trip to Earth instead of being disposed of at the Moon. Canadian engineers at the University of Toronto determined the point in the timeline (just before atmospheric reentry) at which to undock Aquarius, in order to have enough air pressure to push it safely away from Odyssey and send any surviving pieces into the Tonga Trench in the Pacific Ocean. This was important because there was a nuclear power source on board as part of a planned lunar surface experiment -- if it survived reentry it needed to fall into the deep ocean to satisfy Atomic Energy Commission recommendations. Against all odds, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise safely splashed down in the Pacific inside the Odyssey module. The mission is hailed to this day as "The most successful failure" in human spaceflight and as "NASA's finest hour."

Apollo 8

"An outstanding achievement of American space sciences and technology." -- Chairman of the Soviet Intercosmos program on the U.S. Apollo 8 mission, the first flight to take people to the Moon. Apollo 8 was originally meant to be the first test of the lunar lander in Low Earth Orbit. But when delays with the lander began to threaten the goal of landing a person on the Moon by the end of 1969, Apollo 8 was radically changed to a crewed lunar orbit mission just four months before launch. The crew was also completely changed. The mission marked the first crewed launch of the Saturn V rocket, the first time the Saturn V performed the critically precise trans-lunar injection burn to send a craft outward to the Moon, the first time humans left Low Earth Orbit, the first time humans entered the gravity of another space object, the first time a person saw Earthrise over the lunar surface, the first live TV broadcast of humans from orbit of another celestial body, the first time a crewed spacecraft orbited more than one space body, and the first time any human saw the entire Earth in one view. Apollo 8 is often hailed as the most significant flight leading to the success of the Apollo lunar landings. The flight solidified the U.S.'s lead in the Space Race against the Soviet Union.

Gemini 7

This mission shattered all prior records, lasting an impressive 14 days. The crew capsule served as the rendezvous target for the crew of Gemini 6A, and along with Gemini 6A marked the only time two crewed NASA spacecraft were in orbit at the same time. This became the first time two spacecraft rendezvoused in orbit and the first time a U.S. astronaut took their suit off during a mission. The crew also tested improved hygiene products and equipment and suggested changes ultimately used on the Apollo spacecraft.

James A. Lovell Jr.

Gemini 8

This two-person mission marked the first time two spacecraft docked together in space and the first time a U.S. mission suffered an in-flight failure that threatened the lives of the crew. After successfully docking to the Agena target vehicle, one of the Gemini's thrusters became stuck on, throwing the capsule and Agena into a tumble. The crew performed an emergency undocking from the Agena and discovered the problem was with their capsule. Neil Armstrong barely regained manual control as he fought against passing out from the G-forces. The mission was immediately aborted and landed safely in the Pacific Ocean.

Neil A. Armstrong

Gemini 10

This flight marked the first double-rendezvous in human spaceflight history, the first time a person met another spacecraft in space, the first U.S. mission to significantly raise its orbit higher than any human had ever been, and the first time a human spacecraft used a target vehicle's engine to change its orbit and control its orientation. The flight launched 100 minutes after its Agena target vehicle and docked to it 6 hours later. The crew then used the Agena's engine to raise their orbit from 272 km to 763 km -- the highest a human flight had gone to that point. The next day, they made two burns with the Agena to get into the correct orbit to rendezvous with another Agena that had been part of Gemini 8. Collins performed a spacewalk to photograph stars, sunrise, and the Gemini capsule. The crew rendezvoused with the second Agena and Collins performed a second spacewalk to retrieve a micrometeorite collector from the Agena.

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