As the countdown to the crew’s second launch of the Apollo 11 mission crept toward zero, there was no fanfare and no adoring crowds in spectator stands. If the Command Module and the Service Module had collided or interacted in any sort of substantial, unplanned-for way, the return of the first moonwalkers could have been as disastrous as the Space Shuttle Columbia's final flight. After a series of embarrassing defeats at the hands of the Soviets, the engineering marvel that was the Saturn V had captured victory through brute force, taking three Americans to lunar orbit, and successfully depositing two on the surface below. On July 20, 1969, the U.S. won the space race. The Lunar Module... [+] takes off from the Moon and docks with the Command and Service Module. NASA's Apollo 11 moon landing astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned to Earth on July 24, 1969 to mark the … Within an hour of hitting the water, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were taken aboard the Hornet where they were placed in isolation over concerns about “moon germs.” Despite many scientists believing it to be an unnecessary precaution, the crew remained in quarantine for 21 more days after their return. At 12:50 p.m. At 12:50 p.m. on July 24, Columbia splashed down in the Pacific Ocean just 1.94 miles from their intended landing point with the primary recovery carrier, the USS Hornet, just 15 miles out. A half-century ago, as the Apollo 11 command module Columbia ripped through Earth’s atmosphere, moments from ending the historic first lunar landing mission, research results from NASA’s aeronautical innovators helped safely bring the crew home. Monumental as the achievement was, it would be impossible to bring the history-making craft home. With limited fuel, waiting out the storm wasn’t an option. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The crew used the engines on the descent stage to manage their landing, then they’d leave that stage behind, firing the ascent stage’s lunar module ascent engine (LMAE) to propel them back up into orbit. Chosen as the mission to fulfill then-President Kennedy's goal of performing a crewed lunar landing and successful return to Earth, the timeline appeared to go exactly as planned. Open the hatch. Quick as it was, the launch was a long and anxious journey—it would be four hours before the Eagle and its crew would meet up with the command module in orbit. Four days after that, the astronauts successfully returned to Earth, but that was not a foregone conclusion. 9:32 a.m. EDT- On schedule to within less than a second, Apollo 11 blasts off from Launch Pad 39A at Cape Kennedy, Florida to start what is looked upon as the greatest single step in human history-a trip to the Moon, a manned landing and return to Earth. The Command Module then re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, before finally parachuting down to land in the ocean. Engineer Gary Johnson hand-drew schematics for rewiring the Apollo Service Module's jettison controller, and the changes were made just after the next flight: Apollo 12. July 24, 1969 CBS Coverage of Apollo 11 Return to Earth Walter Cronkite anchored CBS News live coverage of the return and recovery of the Apollo 11 astronauts from … Because of the uncertainty of the crew coming back from space, all three crew members had to remain in quarantine for 21 days to ensure they did not bring back any … On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft safely returned to Earth from the moon.This excerpt from Go, Flight! Wiki info. Date: Terminal countdown started.-028:00:00: 21:00:00: 14 Jul 1969: Scheduled 11-hour hold at T-9 hours.-009:00:00 It wasn’t long before they were able to confirm: Apollo 11 was coming home. Stage three fired twice - once to get Apollo into orbit - and then again to propel … Apollo 11’s return to Earth, 24 July 1969; Apollo 11’s return to Earth, 24 July 1969. Our special issue The Apollo Story is out now. The Command Module then separates from the Service Module, which jettisons its fuel and accelerates away. While early plans for the lander may have included artist’s renderings of large windows and a rounded craft, engineers quickly dismissed those ideas. Instead of a series of thrusters firing to move the Service Module away from the Command Module, shifting it to a different trajectory and eliminating the possibility of a collision, the way the thrusters actually fired put the entire mission at risk. (CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images), America's Top Givers: The 25 Most Philanthropic Billionaires, EY & Citi On The Importance Of Resilience And Innovation, Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change, How You Can Find The Solar System’s Smallest Planet With Your Naked Eyes This Week, How Ben Franklin Went From Anti-Vaxxer To Advocate, No, Your Personality Is Not Set In Stone — And Here’s The Science To Prove It, This Forgotten Plan To Protect Americans Should Be A Top Priority For The Biden Administration. Now, with the Lunar Module gone and nothing left between the crew and their home but 240,000 miles of space, it was time to fire up Columbia’s engines. 16 July. Had those two modules collided, the astronauts on board would have had a failed re-entry, killing all three passengers. At the proper moment, when the atmospheric density was great enough and the external temperatures and speeds were low enough, the parachute would deploy, leading to a gentle splashdown in the Pacific Ocean approximately 5 minutes later, where the astronauts could then be safely recovered. The U.S.S. (NASA/Newsmakers), This artist's concept shows the Command Module undergoing re-entry in 5000 °F heat. The Lunar Module, completely intact before the ascent stage is launched, can be seen in full beside the planted American flag. The launch and this one corrective burn were so successful that the other three scheduled SPS maneuvers were not even needed. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. You may opt-out by. The plan to avoid it was simple: the Service Module, post-separation, would perform a series of thrust maneuvers to take it safely away from the re-entry path of the Command Module. There were just two men, a barely tested spacecraft held together in some places with nothing more than tape, and an astronaut carrying their ticket home some 70 miles above. ­To prepare for the return trip, the astronauts had to retrieve the launch couch … (SSPL/Getty Images), splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, all of the crewed Apollo missions ended in similar fashion: with the Command Module's heat shield protecting the astronauts during the early stages of re-entry, and a parachute deploying to slow the final stages of descent to a manageable speed. (AFP/Getty Images). Columbia was designed specifically for such a possibility and a number of pre-selected landing zones had already been established for just such a scenario, but like most elements of the Apollo 11 mission, there remained a great deal of uncertainty as to how well the spacecraft would perform. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. During re-entry, the heat shield charred and melted away, absorbing and carrying away the intense heat in the process. The trip would be a cramped one. Module (where the camera is mounted) seen in nearby. Once safely away, the Command Module would re-orient itself so that the heat shield was in the forward-facing position, prepared to absorb the brunt of the impact of re-entering Earth's atmosphere while protecting the astronauts inside. But during Apollo 11's return to Earth, a serious anomaly occurred: one that went undetected until after the crew returned to Earth. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin raise the American Flag on the Moon, with the shadow of the Lunar... [+] Module (where the camera is mounted) seen in nearby. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were now over 240,000 miles away from the nearest humans. Thanks to the moon’s reduced gravity, the 32,500 pound spacecraft was soon accelerating to a velocity of 2,000 meters per second. Event: GET (hhh:mm:ss) GMT. We may chalk it up to good fortune that the following words never needed to be spoken: In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. At least, it was designed to be. By shifting the Service Module to a significantly different trajectory, it wouldn't even re-enter at the same time as the Command Module, but would skip off the atmosphere this time. . “You have to remember that the LM was carried in the Saturn’s protective shroud and only operated in the vacuum of space,” Thomas J. Kelly, Grumman’s chief engineer on the lunar module, explained. On July 20, the Eagle (lunar module) undocked from the Columbia (command and service module), made a powered descent, and landed on the Moon's surface. This might seem like an extremely small point — to have the Minus X jets cut out after a certain amount of time firing as well as the roll jets — but you must remember that the spacecraft is full of moving parts. A controlled two-and-a-half minute burn from the SPS, initiated from behind the moon, placed the astronauts on a trajectory for home. The astronauts might not have successfully returned to Earth, however, if the procedure used to jettison the fuel from the Service Module had let it come into contact with the Command Module. Once back on the ship, in their quarantine van, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins talked with the President. Four days later, humanity would take our first footsteps on another world. About 12 hours before the crew of Apollo 11 were to reenter earth’s atmosphere, they got the call: they were to fly with their lift vector in the up position for about 90 seconds as they reentered. Facility after returning from the surface of the Moon. At 12:56 a.m. on July 22, the Command Module’s Service Propulsion System (SPS) fired. After traveling hundreds of thousands of miles, beating the odds, and making it back to Earth, the three-man crew of Apollo 11 were not out of the woods yet. The command module lands in the Pacific Ocean, and what do they do? Astronaut Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module Pilot, stands near a scientific experiment on the... [+] lunar surface. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. During the technical debriefing in the aftermath of Apollo 11, the fly-by of the Service Module past the Command Module was noted by Buzz Aldrin, who also reported on the Service Module's rotation, which was far in excess of the design parameters. This was to be the third crewed Apollo mission to land on the Moon, but was aborted due to the onboard explosion. (NASA/ullstein bild via Getty Images). Man's search will not be denied. The spacecraft was … This is how NASA got Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins home. It all sounds so simple and straightforward, which obscures the real truth: for every one of these steps, there were hundreds (or more) potential points of failure that everyone involved needed to guard against. For 24 hours they prepared for the final stage. . Landing astronauts on the moon is hard...getting them back home is harder. An ablative heat shield on the outside of the Command Module protected the capsule from the heat of re-entry (from space into Earth's atmosphere), which is sufficient to melt most metals. Apollo 11 carried the first geologic samples from the Moon back to Earth. Fifty years ago, Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. There are germs on the moon, we come back, the command module is full of lunar germs. I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. “We called it ‘the Bug,’” Gene Cernan, the mission commander on Apollo 17, once said. A far more powerful engine than the one that had flown Aldrin and Armstrong up from the moon’s surface, the SPS consisted of a helium pressurization system, a propellant feed system, a propellant gauging and utilization system (that included sensors for display inside the cabin of the spacecraft and back at mission control), and of course, the rocket engine itself. Follow me on Twitter @startswithabang. Apollo 11 Flight Log July 24 1969 Return To Earth E Apollo 11 Astronauts Spent 3 Weeks In Quarantine Just Case Of What Awaited The … Apollo 11 Moon Landing Was Almost a Failure. An ablative heat shield on the outside of the Command Module protected the capsule from the heat of re-entry (from space into Earth's atmosphere), which is sufficient to melt most metals. They were no longer astronauts. It was only through luck that such a catastrophe was avoided. Unlike the Saturn V, which earned its name through its use of five massive F-1 engines, the ascent module utilized a single fixed-thrust hypergolic rocket engine that traded the F-1’s kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel for a combination of Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide. After orbiting the Earth one-and-a-half times, the Saturn V's third stage re-fired and sent Apollo 11 rocketing toward the moon. Apollo 11 breccia 10018. If the Service Module had collided with the Command Module, a re-entry disaster similar to Space Shuttle Columbia could have occurred just as the USA was taking the conclusive steps of the Space Race. At 1:54 p.m., the 180-pound ascent module engine fired, producing about 3,500 pounds of thrust for 435 seconds. Vice President Spiro Agnew viewed the launch with former president Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson. 01:08 On July 20, 1969, NASA completed the seemingly impossible Apollo 11 mission to put the first two men – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – on the Moon. Even from our perspective in 2019, 50 years later, humanity's achievements from July, 1969, still mark the pinnacle of crewed spaceflight. The Command Module then separates from the Service Module, which jettisons its fuel and accelerates away. It wasn’t only there for the return trip, it was also there to abort a landing should anything have gone wrong. You can see the bits flying off. It sounds so routine. (SSPL/Getty Images). If Armstrong and Aldrin — the first two moonwalkers — were to perish before returning to Earth, the United States already had a presidential address drafted for such a purpose. NASA would eventually drop the quarantine requirement for Apollos 15, 16, and 17, but for Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins, those three weeks may have been some of the most surreal of the entire journey. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. The Earth they had left behind was gone, and in its place was a new one—one that knew man could reach the stars. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. At the danger of becoming complacent, this step, in many ways, already seemed like old hat to many of those staffing the Apollo 11 mission. The result was a more complex platform than the ascent propulsion system with quite a bit more power. View of the Apollo 11 capsule floating on the water after splashing down upon its return to Earth on... [+] July 24, 1969. Inside, you'll find many additional details about this event, including interview snippets with Gary Johnson himself. I have won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for my blog, Starts With A Bang, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. On July 24, 1969, President Nixon was on hand on the USS Hornet (commanded by Admiral John McCain) to watch the splashdown of the Apollo 11 capsule and return of the Apollo 11 astronauts to earth. With the original flaw, the thrusters fired in a pattern that put the Command Module at risk. It was the start of a new era, and as they emerged from their 21 days of isolation, they found that the lives they led before were gone too. The Apollo Lunar Module was a separate vehicle designed to land on the Moon and return to lunar orbit, and was the first true "spaceship" since it flew solely in the vacuum of space. Dignitaries included the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General William Westmoreland, four cabinet members, 19 state governors, 40 mayors, 60 ambassadors and 200 congressmen. Thankfully, the flaw in the jettison controller had been fixed, and the Service Module posed no risk to the astronaut-carrying Command Module from Apollo 13 onwards. The Ascent Module’s Reaction Control System (RCS) fired as the Eagle elevated to about 13 miles below the Command Module’s orbit, rounding out its orbit around the moon. Necessity dictated that the Lunar Module had to be both a landing platform and a launch platform, forcing an unusual design that layered the ascent stage above the descent stage on the spacecraft. Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth, splashing down in … thrusters that control both acceleration and orientation. On July 21, the SPS thrusters fired, returning the Command and Service Module to Earth, with the lone mid-course correction coming on July 22. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins did make it back, making a dramatic splashdown into the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. on July 24, 1969. The Lunar Lander known as Eagle had successfully carried mankind to the moon’s surface, kept them alive, and taken off once again into the darkness of space. Having set foot on the Moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts returned safely to Earth just days later. Four hours after Armstrong and Aldrin reached the CSM, they jettisoned their lunar lifeboat. Here's what it took to get three astronauts back home. For many Americans, it was a day of celebration, but for the three men that had secured victory—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins—the challenges were far from over. If you were around in 1959 and told your friends that ten years from now, we’ll be sending men to the moon and bringing them back safely to earth, you would have been laughed at, ridiculed and probably told to see a psychiatrist. This NASA image was taken on July 16, 1969, and shows some of the thousands of people who camped out... [+] on beaches and roads adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the Apollo 11 mission Liftoff aboard the Saturn V rocket. Columbia was a gumdrop shaped spacecraft reminiscent of the earlier Gemini designs. The problem was that there were two types of thrusters on board the Service Module: the Minus X RCS jets and the RCS roll jets. After jettisoning the LM, the Apollo spacecraft was ready to return home. If the Command Module and the Service Module had collided or interacted in any sort of substantial, unplanned-for way, the return of the first moonwalkers could have been as disastrous as the Space Shuttle Columbia's final flight. This sample has a mass of 213 grams and is up to 8 centimeters across. Re-entry, in principle, ought to be straightforward for the astronauts returning from the Moon. But they weren't ready to return to normality just yet. The Apollo 11 mission was a triumph for the Saturn V, which stands to this day as the most powerful rocket mankind has ever constructed, but Aldrin and Armstrong’s second launch was in a much stranger looking ship. They were heroes. One is the Command Module; the other is the Service Module. Today, the lander we called Eagle stands among America’s most iconic imagery, but at the time, it bore little resemblance to what most Americans thought a spaceship should look like. This NASA picture taken on April 17, 1970, shows the Service Module (codenamed "Odyssey") from the... [+] Apollo 13 mission. You got to open the hatch! The Service Module was jettisoned from the Command Module early, and the damage is clearly visible on the right side. Although there are no known photographs of the Apollo 11 Command Module descending towards... [+] splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, all of the crewed Apollo missions ended in similar fashion: with the Command Module's heat shield protecting the astronauts during the early stages of re-entry, and a parachute deploying to slow the final stages of descent to a manageable speed. While the exterior of the ship was symmetrical, the interior was designed to position the majority of the weight near the crew’s feet—giving the craft a specific orientation for reentry. That final step alone, which returned the astronauts from their presence around to Moon — after journeying back to Earth — was one of the most crucial. Four days later, humanity would take our first footsteps on another world. The SPS could produce 21,900 pounds of thrust at intervals ranging from less than half of a second all the way up to twelve-and-a-half minutes. The Lunar Module, completely intact before the ascent stage is launched, can be seen in full beside the planted American flag. Thankfully, the flaw in the jettison controller had been fixed, and the Service Module posed no risk to the astronaut-carrying Command Module from Apollo 13 onwards. It was only through luck that such a catastrophe was avoided. (MPI/Getty Images). The People Who Made the Moon Landing Possible, How the Moon Missions Changed Modern Technology, How PopMech Readers Watched the Moon Landing, Apollo 11's Michael Collins Is Ready To Go To Mars. At supersonic speeds and the proper angle, that small lean created by the strategic weight placement resulted in some degree of lift, allowing the craft to fly, if ever so slightly, further than an uncontrolled descent would allow. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson moon.This excerpt from Go flight... Got Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and what do they do just days later and at! Aldrin left the lunar Module to explore the lunar Module... [ ]! Foot on the right side took to get three astronauts back home is harder 22, astronauts! 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