On July 20, 1969, hundreds of millions of people across the entire globe watched as NASA made history with the first-ever humans to step foot on the moon. The ship was called Apollo 11 and had 3 personal crew, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins, all of whom had traveled to space before and had experience as astronauts. Neil and Buzz went out onto the moon, while Michael flew around the moon inside the Columbia, Apollo 11’s lunar command module. The main goal of the Apollo 11 was to complete a goal that John F. Kennedy set for the US on May 25, 1961, that the US would set foot on the moon for the first time in history to beat the Soviet Union in the Space Race. This incredible feat of science allowed the US to catch up to the USSR who had already made the first satellite and sent the first person to space.

How Apollo 11 worked:

The name of the rocket itself that sent Apollo 11 to space was the Saturn V It had 3 stages, the first fired the Saturn V into the air, then detached itself and started stage 2 of the rocket, sending it even further into space. Then, after stage 2 was detached, stage 3 fired for a short period to get into an orbit around the Earth. Now, after one and a half revolutions and checking everything, they waited until their angle and position were correct and fired again to enter the moon’s orbit, a method called Translunar Injection. Now, there was no more need for the Saturn V. They then reconfigured the ship during the flight so that the crew could have access to the Columbia and after a few more days of space travel, once it entered the moon’s orbit, the Columbia detached from the Apollo. Once the mission was completed, they launched and transferred back into the Columbia, and now the lunar module could be discarded, as it had no further purpose. After they broke out of the moon’s orbit, using a move named the Transearth Injection, they flew back to Earth and safely landed in the Pacific Ocean.

RELATED STORIES:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo11.html

https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/apollo-11-moon-landing

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Apollo-11

https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/moon-landing-1969

https://www.space.com/16758-apollo-11-first-moon-landing.html

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