Ontario Community Newspapers

Georgetown Herald (Georgetown, ON), July 22, 1989, p. 14

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Page 14 THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday July 1960s goal Heres how America sent men to the moon NOTE Twenty years ago The World Almanac focused on the Apollo 11 mission as the top news story ol 1969 The following is excerpted from The World Almanacs summary oLthe US moon landing program during the 1960s By Th World Almanac On May 1961 President John F Kennedy made this historic pro nouncement I believe we should go to the before the decade is out Exactly 2 days later on July the United States had real ized this seemingly impossible achievement regarded by many as the greatest peacetime effort in it history As one cf its commitments to par ticipate the International Geophys ical the United States had proposed to put a satellite in orbit to learn more about the earth The Soviet Union also expressed its interest in doing so and actually placed Sputnik I in orbit on Oct Eighty days later the United States had launched Explorer I and the space race was underway its surroundings to the Earth Surveyor I landed in June 1966 be a successful soft lander pro gram by the United States and re turned over 11 TV photos In August 1966 the S Lunar Or biter program began and ultimately accomplished the photo mapping of almost the entire lunar surface front and back Later Surveyors carried in believe we should go to the moon before the decade is out addition to TV cameras a mechanical manipulator and a device for obtain ing information about the ground un der each spacecraft All of these efforts were primarily directed to learning more of the na ture of the lunar surface to prevent as much surprise to astronauts as possible NEXT to a VS flag astronaut Edwin Buzz tanas on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission 20 years ago The decision to send men to the moon came about six weeks after Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union had made one successful orbit of the Earth on April But it was made even before US astronaut John it threeorbit flight on Feb 20 President Kennedys statement gave direction to the manned space flight program of the National Aero nautics and Space Administration That statement also provided a very serious purpose for the un manned exploration of the moon the first successful step ol which was the flight of Ranger 7 in July 1964 Rangers 8 and together re turned nearly photographs of areas of the moon before each crashed on the lunar surface These flights revealed that the moon is wa tered continually down to the limit of resolution about a yard in diameter The first successful non destruc tive landing on the moon was accom plished by the in February BLASTING off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July the ApolloSaturn V space vehi cle begins its historic Journey to the moon The 363foot high vehicle car ried the Apollo astronauts GOOEY GOOD TRY OUR NEW DELIVERY SERVICEI 308 St 873 Fashions For The Young At Heart WW ST GE0RSET0WH ham km Mat I RITEHION- ARPET RUG CO LTD SALES SERVICE INSTALLATIONS CARPET VINYL TILE EARTH RISES to greet the Apollo astronaut miles from home as they emerge from an behind the moea Neil Armstrong Edwin Ban and Michael Collins carried oat the historic VS mission that first landed men on the moon on July 20 1369 The U S Mercury program experience for men in weightless flight and It was followed by the more ambitious Gemini program In the Gemini program two men orbited the Earth in their single capsule Long before Gemini I in March 1963 NASA had been committed to the basic plan to be followed in the later Apollo missions to the moon The Key maneuver In the Apollo program was for a portion of a lunar orbiting vehicle to descend to the lu nar surface and allow one or more people to explore the landing site and return to the mother ship in a ren dezvous anddocking procedure The Gemini program established the capability for the orbit changing and rendezvous activities required In addition to providing astronauts with the experience of working in the vac outside of their spacecraft on ther their own or another vehicle in orbit nearby Meanwhile the Apollo program proceeding It suffered a tragic setback when Astronauts Roger Chaf fee Virgil Grissom and Edward White died in a fire inside an Apollo command module during a ground test in January 1967 After a complete redesign of the systems in the command module and some crucial unmanned flights Apollo 8 was ready to fly with Astro nauts Frank Borman William Anders and James in December They became the first men to see with their own eyes the hidden side of the moon Thus NASA learned it could put men into orbit around the moon and bring them home to a safe reentry over the Pacific Ocean The Apollo 9 flight established the capability of the Lunar Module as sembly for independent maneuver rendezvous and docking while in orbit around the Earth Essentially an engineering flight Apollo 10 went to the moon with Thomas Stafford Eugene Cernan and John Young Astronauts Stafford and made two orbits of the moon the Lunar Module assembly ap proaching the surface of the moon to within feet The experience and the photo graphs they obtained paved the way for the Apollo flight they estab lished that the system worked as planned in lunar orbit Many of the necessary steps had been taken one at a time before fi nally committing men to a lunar land ing But the actual descent landing exploration and ascent to orbit could not be experienceo except by simula tion without actually doing them To this extent Apollo with Nell Armstrong Edwin Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins was an engineering mission with scientific accomplish being a byproduct Its chief achievement was trans porting men to the surface of the moon for the first time and returning them safely to Earth Bulk Foods FOR ALL YOUR BAKING NEEDS OPEN DAYS I IN TIM PLAZA I Your Dependable Home Cleaning Service Specializing in House Cleaning For Particular People DtfltlHCLWllH US FOB A 8761672 or 8731 386 Tile fcsg Deacons Bench Gallery MAIN ST S GEORGETOWN Above McCarthys Ti Roam 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