Apollo 11 Mission: The First Human Neil Amastron On Moon!

On May 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 launch vehicle and spacecraft had been crawled from the Vehicle Assembly Building and trundled at 0.9 mph to Pad 39-A. A successful countdown test ending on July 3 showed the readiness of machines, systems, and people. The next launch window (established by lighting conditions at the landing site on Mare Tranquillitatis) opened at 9:32 AM EDT on July 16, 1969.

The crew for Apollo 11, all of whom had already flown in space during Gemini, had been intensively training as a team for many months. Commander Neil A. Armstrong, 38, was a civilian who had flown previously on Gemini 8; Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, 38, was a USAF Lt. Colonel who'd flown Gemini 10; Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin, Jr., 39, was a USAF Colonel who'd flown Gemini 12.

The launch went off without a hitch. The first human journey to the surface of the Moon began at Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida with the liftoff of Apollo 11 on a Saturn V booster at 9:32 a.m. EDT (13:32 UT) on a clear sunny Wednesday, 16 July 1969.

The Apollo spacecraft reached Earth parking orbit after 11 minutes. After one and a half orbits the Saturn thrusters fired and the astronauts began their journey to the Moon. On July 20, 1969, after a four day trip, the Apollo astronauts arrived at the Moon and the spacecraft was inserted into lunar orbit.

After a rest period, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the Lunar Module preparing for descent to the lunar surface. The two spacecraft were undocked at about 100 hours, when the Command and Service Modules separated from the Lunar Module. "You cats take it easy on the lunar surface", Michaels Collins said as he released the LM.

Collins did a visual inspection of the lunar module and said, "I think you've got a fine looking machine there, Eagle, despite the fact that you're upside-down."

"Somebody's upside-down", Neil Armstrong joked back.

Lunar Module Pilot, Buzz Aldrin carefully navigated his way to the Lunar surface. He had to fly longer than planned, in order to avoid a field of boulders, and touched down with less than 40 seconds of fuel remaining at 4:18 p.m. EDT on July 20.

Mission commander, Neil Armstrong spoke those famous words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Charles Duke, the Capcom (capsule communicator) back in Houston, replied, "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again."

It took 6 hours to prepare to exit the Lunar Module. At 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon, marking the occasion with these words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Unfortunately, a minor break in communications caused the entire world to hear and remember the statement as "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo lunar surface camera, mounted on one of the LM legs, broadcast this event to the world.

Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface about nineteen minutes later, calling it "Magnificent desolation". As he left the LM, Aldrin said, "Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch - making sure not to lock it on my way out." "A particularly good thought." laughed Armstrong.

Asked later on why they bothered closing the hatch, Armstrong said it was to avoid having someone ask "Were you born in a barn?"

The History Of Moon Exploration!

The Earth’s Moon has had a profound effect on the entire history and development of human civilization. Many cultures used the cycle of the Moon’s phases to measure time. The Moon has been venerated in various forms throughout history. The Greeks worshiped the Moon goddess Artemis. The Romans called her Diana. The Celts called her Arianrod. The Egyptians considered Isis a goddess of the Moon. Indeed, in virtually every culture, the deity associated with the Moon has always been female, possibly because of associations of the lunar phase cycle with the female menstrual cycle.

Galileo first discovered, through his telescope, that the Moon was a world, with mountains and dark areas that he called “Mare” or “Seas” which we now know are relatively flat areas that are nevertheless drier than the most arid Earthly desert. Nineteenth century astronomers thought that the Moon might be an abode of life, much like the Earth.

Journeys to the Moon have been the subject of literature for centuries. Cyrano de Bergerac wrote of traveling to the Moon, buoyed up by jars of dew. In the 19th Century, Jules Verne wrote of Civil War era astronauts flying to the Moon in a ship fired by a massive cannon. H. G. Wells has his explorers travel to the Moon in a ship built of an impossible gravity shielding material he called Cavorite.

With the advent of motion pictures, voyages to the Moon became the subject of film as well. The very first was the French film, Le Voyage dans la Lune. Others included the German film, Frau im Mond, and the George Pal classic, Destination Moon.

Rocket pioneer Robert Goddard made one of the first serious suggestions for sending rockets to the Moon. He was attacked by the New York Times for this idea in 1920. The Times loftily explained that space travel was impossible, since without atmosphere to push against, a rocket could not move so much as an inch. Professor Goddard, it was clear, lacked "the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." Nearly fifty years later, the Times published a retraction and an apology soon after men actually did travel to the Moon.

After the end of the Second World War, as rocket technology advanced and the Cold War began to rage, the United States and the Soviet Union turned their attentions heavenward. It was only natural that space would become a venue for super power competition and that the Moon would be a destination. Fleets of probes, Soviet Lunas and Zonds and American Rangers, Lunar Orbiters, Surveyors, and Apollos, were sent to the Moon between 1959 and 1976 during the first great age of lunar exploration.

The History of the Moon!

The Moon may seem like a lifeless and unchanging place, but it actually has a fascinating history. The driving factor behind the lunar history is the fact that because the moon is small, it cooled quickly and formed a thick, rigid crust.

The Moon solidified about 4.1 to 4.6 billion years ago. Though there is little iron in the lunar composition, what there was sunk to the core and solidified. The lower density material floated to the top and formed the crust.

The next stage in the moon's history involved extensive cratering. Cratering in the highlands shows that impacts were at a peak during the moon's first 0.5 billion years. At this time, there was a great deal of debris floating around in the solar system that was left over from planet formation.

Giant crater basins were formed by the largest impacts, some of the craters being hundreds of kilometers in diameter. The Imbrium basin was formed by an impact from a body the size of the state of Delaware. The impact threw ejecta 1400 km away from the site. This site is about 4 billion years old.

The third stage in lunar history is lava floods. By this time, the anorthosite crust had been cracked many times from impacts. The subsurface material had been heated, probably by radioactive decay in the rocks. Lava then flowed up through the cracks and flooded the basins with successive lava flows. Flooding ceased about 3.2 billion years ago.

The History of Earth!

In the very beginning of earth's history, this planet was a giant, red hot, roiling, boiling sea of molten rock - a magma ocean. The heat had been generated by the repeated high speed collisions of much smaller bodies of space rocks that continually clumped together as they collided to form this planet. As the collisions tapered off the earth began to cool, forming a thin crust on its surface. As the cooling continued, water vapor began to escape and condense in the earth's early atmosphere. Clouds formed and storms raged, raining more and more water down on the primitive earth, cooling the surface further until it was flooded with water, forming the seas.

It is theorized that the true age of the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, formed at about the same time as the rest of our solar system. The oldest rocks geologists have been able to find are 3.9 billion years old. Using radiometric dating methods to determine the age of rocks means scientists have to rely on when the rock was initially formed (as in - when its internal minerals first cooled). In the infancy of our home planet the entire earth was molten (melted) rock - a magma ocean.

Since we can only measure as far back in time as we had solid rock on this planet, we are limited in how we can measure the real age of the earth. Due to the forces of plate tectonics, our planet is also a very dynamic one; new mountains forming, old ones wearing down, volcanoes melting and reshaping new crust. The continual changing and reshaping of the earth's surface that involves the melting down and reconstructing of old rock has pretty much eliminated most of the original rocks that came with earth when it was newly formed. So the age is a theoretical age.

Man Enters In Space On 1961

On April 12, 1961, the era of human spaceflight began when the Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in his Vostock I spacecraft. The flight lasted 108 minutes.

Twenty years later, on the morning of April 12, 1981, two astronauts sat strapped into their seats on the flight deck of Columbia, a radically new spacecraft known as the space shuttle.

Astronaut John Young, a veteran of four previous spaceflights including a walk on the moon in 1972, commanded the mission. Navy test pilot Bob Crippen piloted the mission and would go on to command three future shuttle missions.

Space Shuttle astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen (in tan space suits) are greeted by members of the ground crew moments after stepping off the shuttle Columbia following its maiden flight.

From: NASA

The History of Earth Day!

In the Beginning...
In 1963, former Senator Gaylord Nelson began to worry about our planet. (A senator is a person that the people of the United States have chosen to help make the laws.) Senator Nelson knew that our world was getting dirty and that many of our plants and animals were dying.

He wondered why more people weren't trying to solve these problems. He talked to other lawmakers and to the President. They decided that the President would go around the country and tell people about these concerns. He did, but still not enough people were working on the problem.

The Idea
Then, in 1969, Senator Nelson had another idea. He decided to have a special day to teach everyone about the things that needed changing in our environment. He wrote letters to all of the colleges and put a special article in Scholastic Magazine to tell them about the special day he had planned. (Most of the schools got this magazine and he knew that kids would help him.)

The Holiday
On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was held. People all over the country made promises to help the environment. Everyone got involved and since then, Earth Day has spread all over the planet. People all over the world know that there are problems we need to work on and this is our special day to look at the planet and see what needs changing. Isn't it great?

One person had an idea and kept working until everyone began working together to solve it. See what happens when people care about our world?

What Is Earth Day?

Answer: Earth Day is the day designated for fostering appreciation of the earth's environment and awareness of the issues that threaten it. Actually, Earth Day is one of two days, depending on when you choose to observe it. Some people celebrate Earth Day on the first day of Spring, which is the vernal equinox that occurs on or around March 21st. In 1970, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth. Since that time, Earth Day has been officially observed in April. At present, Earth Day is observed in 175 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network. The passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act are considered to be products associated with the 1970 Earth Day.

Earth Day and Chemistry
Earth Day and chemistry go hand-in-hand, since so many of the issues that threaten the environment have a chemical basis. Chemistry topics you can investigate for Earth Day include:

1. Green Chemistry
2. Chemicals Used to Remediate Oil Spills
3. Water Chemistry and Water Purification Methods
4. Sources of Anthropogenic Carbon
5. How Biofuels Are Made
6. Environmentally Friendly Lab Demonstrations