Us Space Program From Mercury To Apollo And Beyond: Neil Armstrong

The US had already started a space program with the Mercury mission with the main goal was to find out if they could get a human up into space and survive, NASA announced the seven Project Mercury Astronauts on April 9, 1959. The first launch of the mercury program was on May 5 1961 with Alan Shepard being the first into space. The mercury rockets were a one person rocket where the flights only lasted a total of 15 minutes and 28 seconds. The US reached their orbital goal in 1962 when John Glenn made three orbits around the Earth. The mercury missions went from 1958 to 1963 and the six maned flights went from 1961 to 1963.

The Gemini program defined and tested the skills NASA would need to go to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Gemini had four main goals: to test an astronaut’s ability to fly longer missions up to two weeks in space to find out how spacecraft could fly and dock in orbit around the Earth and the moon to perfect re-entry and landing methods and to further find the effects of longer space flights on astronauts. The astronauts that were involved in the Gemini program were Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan the program ran from 1965 to 1966.

The Apollo program ran from 1961 to 1975 with the first crewed flight in 1968. It achieved its goal of crewed lunar landing, despite the major setback of a 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test in that failed test the crew were Gus Grissom, Roger B. Chaffee and Ed White. The goal for the Apollo program was for them to get to the moon but all the flights up until Apollo 11 were to test flight components and test stuff that they would need to get on the moon. They didn’t attempt to land on the moon until everything had been tested and they were confident that they could land on the moon and return home safely. On the 24th July 1969 Apollo 11 finally landed on the moon with the crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and the moon landing was the first time that a space flight was aired in colour TV where Neil Armstrong said when he stepped foot on the moon ‘That’s one small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind.’

The future of space exploration- NASA now stands on the verge of commercializing low-Earth orbit. These experiences and partnerships will enable NASA to go back to the Moon in 2024 and then will look towards flying to mas in the future. Elon Musk and SpaceX have proposed the development of Mars transportation infrastructure in order to facilitate the eventual colonization of Mars it would take around 9 months in total to get to mars if all goes to plan.