It has been half a century since mankind first managed the previously unthinkable, landing men on the moon just 66 years after the Wright brothers successfully tested a fixed-wing aircraft successfully for the first time. On July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft launched from the Kennedy Space Centre on Merritt Island, Florida, as the three crew members embarked on a three-day journey to the Moon.
Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin launched in Apollo 11’s command module Columbia at 13:32 UTC on July 16 using a Saturn V rocket. A successful launch saw Apollo 11 enter Earth orbit just 12 minutes after launch, at an altitude of around 186km. Under three hours into the flight, a trans-lunar injection burn from the S-IVB engine pushed the spacecraft onto its trajectory towards the moon. Columbia itself separated from the spent stage, before docking with the lunar module, Eagle, and releasing the combined spacecraft from the spent S-IVB altogether. Apollo 11 was on its way.
The spacecraft entered lunar orbit on July 19, at 17:21 UTC, as it started the first of 30 orbits around the moon. Just under 20 hours later, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong entered the lunar command module, Eagle, while Michael Collins remained in the command and service module, Columbia, as they prepared for descent of the lunar module to the moon’s surface. Landing of Eagle itself occurred on July 20, at 20:17 UTC, in the Sea of Tranquillity. On July 21, at 02:39 UTC, the lunar command module hatch was opened, and Armstrong began his descent onto the surface, becoming the first man to walk on the moon. Several Apollo missions subsequently took men to the moon, with the most recent being Apollo 17 in 1972. Astronaut Harrison Schmitt remains the most recent living person to have walked on the lunar surface.
Buzz Aldrin posing on the Moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong. Credits: NasaFifty years later, and almost 47 years since the last manned lunar landing, a new Nasa programme named Artemis plans to put ‘the first woman and the next man’ on the lunar surface by 2024. This crewed spaceflight programme aims to be the first step in establishing a sustainable presence on our nearest cosmic neighbour, laying the way forward for a lunar economy and eventually being central in efforts to send humans to Mars for the first time. With Nasa’s current targets being the return to the moon in the 2020s and missions to Mars by the 2030s, human deep space exploration might be about to enter a new golden era.
Mr Josef Borg is currently a PhD student within the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy, University of Malta, and also the president of the Astronomical Society of Malta.
Did you know?
• Apollo 11 astronauts were quarantined for three weeks upon return to Earth. Not much was known about the possibility of life forms proliferating on the lunar surface itself at the time, and the risk of unknown moon bugs being brought back from the mission to the moon was one Nasa could not take. The astronauts were left in isolation for 21 days, even though the chances of contagions from the moon were considered unlikely.
• The Saturn V rocket, which launched Apollo 11, took just six years to build. With development of the Saturn V rocket starting in 1961 under the leadership of German rocket pioneer Werner von Braun, the Saturn V made its first test flight in 1967, successfully launching the uncrewed Apollo 4 spacecraft.
• Astronauts left behind several objects on the lunar surface. In order to save on weight for the take-off from the lunar surface, astronauts left behind more than just footprints and flags on the lunar surface – rovers and descent modules among the heaviest of these. Descent modules have even been recently photo-graphed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Sound bites
German-Russian astronomy satellite launches
• The Spektrum-Röntgen-Gamma (Spektr-RG) satellite took to the skies on Saturday, July 13, at 17:31 local time (12:31 UT). The Proton rocket carrying the spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh Steppe in Russia.
https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/german-russian-astronomy-satellite-launches/
Astronomers identify host galaxy of a third radio flash
• Astronomers have narrowed down the location of a third “fast radio burst” to a galaxy very like the Milky Way. Just one week after astronomers announced an incredible feat – identifying the galaxy that hosted a flash of radio waves that lasted only a fraction of a second – an independent team has done it again. The results take us one step closer to understanding the origins of the mysterious fast radio bursts.
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