The basic Apollo space suit was also used for spacewalking during the Skylab missions. During the early flights of the space shuttle, astronauts wore a brown flight suit. Like earlier missions, this flight suit was meant to protect the astronauts if the cabin pressure failed. Its design was ...
Many expected the program to fail. Budget estimates from 1963 projected a cost upward of $40 billion, twice the original budget set in 1961. George E. Mueller, associate administrator for the Office of Manned Space Flight, wrote in his diary in September 1963: “Without much improved managemen...
Apollo spacecraft - command and service module for transporting the crew to and from the Earth's surface Skylab was manned by two additional crews. Skylab 3 consisted of Commander Alan Bean and astronauts Jack Lousma and Owen Garriot. They spent 59 days in space. The final crew, Skylab 4,...
The Apollo astronauts brought home hundreds of pounds of moon rock, drilled core samples, measured seismic activity (“moonquakes”), collected atmospheric data of the near-vacuum lunar environment, and measured the precise distance from the Earth to the moon....
NASA has achieved many accomplishments since it was established. Project Mercury was its first program to send astronauts into space to test humans' survival. It included six manned flights between 1961 and 1963. As part of Project Apollo, Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong became the first person...
To experience sustained free fall, you must be in space. Sustained lunar and Martian gravity are also available only beyond Earth, either on those bodies or in AG. To date only a dozen astronauts have experienced lunar gravity, and then for only one to three days each. And nobody has yet...
The Space Shuttle program retired in 2011, starting this window we’re in where the US has no way to perform manned space flight. The next Space Shuttle-style full US space program is supposed to be the creatively-named Space Launch System and its Orion spacecraft, but delays have pushed ...
This story has been corrected to reflect that President Kennedy first announced the intent to send astronauts to the moon in May 1961, then discussed the plans at Rice University in September 1962. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And ...
Apollo 13, when limited battery power and an inability to use the high-gain antennas meant the crew was unable to communicate with NASA's Manned Space Flight Network, the largest DSN antenna, along with Australia's Parkes Observatory radio telescope, was critical in bringing the astronauts home...
Shortly afterward, Amazon's Jeff Bezos makes his own space flight onboard the rocket New Shepard. 2022: NASA unveils a giant new Moon rocket named Space Launch System (SLS), slated to be 15 percent more powerful than the Saturn V that took astronauts to the Moon first time around. ...