Astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin climbing down the ladder of Apollo 11 and onto the surface of the Moon on July 20, (National Aeronautics

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1 8 ow it is time to take longer strides time for a great Nnew American enterprise time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. With these words, spoken before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy ( ) declared to the world the bold intention of the United States in its space race with the Soviet Union (present-day Russia). That race, which had officially begun with the launch of the Soviet unmanned artificial satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, was a contest for superiority in space. It paralleled the Cold War, the prolonged conflict for world dominance from 1945 to 1991 between the two superpowers: the democratic, capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Union. The race would go on for almost two decades. 160

2 70222-ALMANAC-V qxd 10/5/04 7:29 AM Page 161 Astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin climbing down the ladder of Apollo 11 and onto the surface of the Moon on July 20, (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 161

3 For several years at the beginning of the space race, the Soviet Union held the undisputed lead. Even as the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958, the Soviets continued with ever more impressive accomplishments, particularly in the area of lunar (Moon) exploration. On January 2, 1959, the Soviets launched the space probe Luna 1. The probe was supposed to have reached the Moon, but a failure of its control system caused it to miss the Moon by about 3,730 miles (6,000 kilometers). Nonetheless, it was the first human-made object to reach escape velocity, which is the minimum speed that an object, such as a rocket, must have in order to escape completely from the gravitational influence of a planet or a star. Over the next twenty-seven years, a series of twenty-four Luna space probes thoroughly explored the Moon and space around it. These probes accomplished a number of firsts, including orbiting, photographing, and landing on the Moon. Two Luna probes even deployed rovers (remote-controlled robotic vehicles) on the Moon, which crossed its surface and analyzed soil composition. But the goal of the space race was to put a human in space. In fact, that had been a dream of spaceflight visionaries for decades. The Soviets were the first to achieve this goal, sending Yuri Gagarin in a single-orbit flight around Earth aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, The United States matched the accomplishment of putting a man in space when astronaut Alan Shepard lifted off aboard Freedom 7 on May 5, Three weeks after Shepard s short suborbital (less than an orbit) flight, President Kennedy committed the nation to place a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. This bold commitment, made before a U.S. astronaut had even completed one orbit, would bring together the nation in an effort to surpass the Soviets in space achievement. Both the United States and the Soviet Union worked to develop and perfect the necessary measures for a manned lunar mission. Among the countless tasks and procedures that had to be learned and mastered were how to rendezvous (meet up) and dock two spacecraft in orbit, to provide life support for astronauts (called cosmonauts in the Soviet Union) for up to two weeks in space, to train astronauts to deal with prolonged periods of weightlessness, and to determine the level 162 Space Exploration: Almanac

4 of radiation in space that astronauts could endure. In the United States, the program intended to accomplish this preliminary work was known as Project Gemini. The first flight of the newly designed two-person Gemini capsule came on March 23, 1965, with astronauts Virgil Gus Grissom ( ) and John W. Young (1930 ) on board. But the United States had been upstaged by the Soviet Union, which had sent three cosmonauts on a daylong flight on October 12, 1964, on Voskhod 1. Voskhod was the Soviet spacecraft hurriedly designed to beat the Gemini program. On the second Voskhod mission, launched March 18, 1965, cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov (1934 ) made the first spacewalk, or EVA (extravehicular activity). It would be almost a week later before the first manned Gemini flight lifted off from the launch pad. The goal of placing humans on the Moon was made not so much in the interest of science but of national prestige. In the space race in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union had bested the United States many times. But in the actual race to the Moon, the United States would claim the prize of superiority. The manned space program that landed astronauts on the Moon and brought them safely back to Earth, fulfilling Kennedy s promise, was. It was an endeavor that firmly established the United States s technological supremacy over its rival nations. On July 29, 1960, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Words to Know Artificial satellite: A man-made device that orbits Earth and other celestial bodies and that follows the same gravitational laws that govern the orbit of a natural satellite. Cold War: A prolonged conflict for world dominance from 1945 to 1991 between the democratic, capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Union. The weapons of conflict were commonly words of propaganda and threats. Escape velocity: The minimum speed that an object, such as a rocket, must have in order to escape completely from the gravitational influence of a planet or a star. Jettison: To eject or discard. Mass: The measure of the total amount of matter in an object. Probe: An unmanned spacecraft sent to explore the Moon, other celestial bodies, or outer space; some probes are programmed to return to Earth while others are not. Rover: A remote-controlled robotic vehicle. Spacewalk: Technically known as an EVA, or extravehicular activity, an excursion outside a spacecraft or space station by an astronaut or cosmonaut wearing only a pressurized spacesuit and, possibly, some sort of maneuvering device. Thrust: The forward force generated by a rocket. 163

5 70222-ALMANAC-V qxd 10/5/04 7:30 AM Page 164 President John F. Kennedy, speaking before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on May 25, (AP/Wide World Photos) (NASA) had proposed a plan to develop a three-man spacecraft, to be known as Apollo, that could operate in low Earth or circumlunar (around the Moon) orbit. But with Kennedy s 1961 speech, the focus of Apollo shifted. The program would become one of the great triumphs of modern technology. Of its eleven manned missions, six would land on the Moon. Each one extended the range and scope of lunar exploration. In 1972 the program came to a conclusion, and with it ended the first and only wave of human exploration of the Moon to date. The total cost for the program was about twenty-five billion dollars at the time. Only the building of the Panama Canal between 1904 and 1914 rivaled it as the largest nonmilitary technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States. The details surrounding the Soviet manned lunar program were not as well known as those of Apollo. In fact, Soviet of164 Space Exploration: Almanac