Yesterday was, needles to say, a rather rough day for me. I woke up quite late, as usual, to the news that Astronaut John Young had died the previous day, January 5th. John Young was an absolute legend among astronauts, up there as high as Alan Shepard, John Glenn or Neil Armstrong. John Young flew […]
Early in the morning of December 7th, 1972, the final Apollo mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, launched from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center carrying Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, Harrison Schmitt to the Taurus–Littrow lunar valley. Apollo 17’s landing location and planned launch time dictated the first night launch of any manned American […]
Update 6-23-2018: The original upload channel has been deleted. This article has been replaced by a new one for the 45th anniversary of the Skylab 2 mission here: https://www.xadara.com/skylab-the-first-40-days/ Switching gears just a bit back to space, we have this nice little film from the mid 70’s regarding the first manned Skylab mission. Skylab was […]
I wrote earlier that today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 4 – the first flight of the Saturn V rocket. This mission was designed to both test the entire Saturn V, but also the Apollo Command Module. Previous Article – 50 Years Ago, The Launch Of Apollo 4 – The First […]
At 7:00 AM Eastern Time on November 9th, 1967, 5 F-1 rocket engines, each one alone producing 1 and a half million lbs of thrust, roared to life, beginning the first flight of the most powerful machine ever built by humanity – the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was the machine that, if everything […]
48 years ago today on July 24th, 1969, Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific ocean after successfully landing on the Moon. This completed the nations commitment to “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” before the end of the decade, and showed to the world that our combined […]
This footage, taken from the interview shared in the previous article, is a combination of modern Lunar imagery of the Apollo 11 landing site matched up with the footage from the camera onboard the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. I had previously found the combined videos, but I had not seen until yesterday this version with […]
UPDATE: I’m aware the video is no longer available. I will be looking for an alternateive source. If I do not find one, this article will stay in this state until such a time as I do. 48 Years ago today, on July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon as […]
This film is a quick, 6 minute look at the navigation and guidance systems of the Apollo spacecraft. Something I noticed is that the film is dated to 1966, but uses footage from what is clearly the Apollo 6 mission, an unmanned Saturn V launch in April of 1968 – my best guess is this […]
July 16th, 1969, the day 48 years ago that a Saturn V rocket launched carrying Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin into Earth orbit, and then beyond it towards the first attempted landing on the Moon. That landing of course would be successful on July 20th, 1969. Give that it’s a Sunday and an […]
On May 18th, 1969, John Young, Tom Stafford, and Gene Cernan began an 8 day mission that would act as a “dress rehearsal” for the planned manned landing on the Moon of Apollo 11. This flight was the 2nd of 4 that would be launched in 1969, and would serve to test the Lunar Module […]
Here we have a quick, 5 minute film clip from 1966, produced by NASA to provide a status update on the Apollo Program. In 1966, as you may recall, we were finishing up the Gemini Program, and the Saturn V rocket was nearing testing completion for it’s first flight, in late 1967, as a test […]
45 years ago this past month, from April 16th to April 27th of 1972, the Apollo 16 mission went to, and returned from, the Moon on our 5th successful lunar landing mission. This film goes over the mission in detail, going over key points of the mission and the unique events that happened during the […]
45 years ago today, on April 16th, 1972, Apollo 16, the penultimate mission of the Apollo Lunar Program, launched, carrying John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charles Duke on a mission to land at Descartes Highlands and learn more about the geology of the lunar highlands, a part of the Moons lithograph that had not been […]
The ill-fated Apollo 13 missions launched on this day, April 11th, 47 years ago today in the year 1970. The mission was famously portrayed in the 1995 film Apollo 13 which, while somewhat inaccurate on many elements, and slightly altered for the sake of drama, still told the story well enough for most people to […]