In 1957, the launch of Sputnik started the “space race”.
A technician working on Sputnik 1, before its launch on October 4, 1957. After only 3 months in space, Sputnik 1 fell back to Earth due to atmospheric drag, a problem that plagues all satellites in low Earth orbit even today.
Then the USA and the USSR raced to put men on the moon.
This photo shows USSR space program chief Sergei Korolev congratulating cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin before he became the first man in space, which he achieved on April 12, 1961. American Alan Shepard would become the first American in space. soon after: May 5, 1961.
Many sacrificed their lives to achieve this goal.
First flown in 1959, the T-38 Talon has been a working space pilot training aircraft for more than 60 years, although a number of training accidents in the 1960s claimed the lives of several early astronauts before mankind could ever went to the moon. Theodore Freeman, Charles Basset, Elliot See and Clifton Williams all died in training accidents using this aircraft from 1964-1967.
T-38 Talon training accidents killed four early astronauts.
Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee (left), Ed White (center) and Gus Grissom (right) inside the Apollo Mission Simulator (AMS) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1967. This photo, taken in January 1967, were supposed to be in preparation for the first successful launch of the Apollo era. Instead, a fire during a subsequent test set the Apollo program back nearly a full calendar year, killing all three astronauts in a span of just 26 seconds.
The tragic Apollo 1 launch pad fire killed three others.
Just 20 months after the Apollo 1 fire, the first Apollo astronauts would launch into space aboard Apollo 7: Wally Chirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham. Apollo 7 was a mission in low Earth orbit and never escaped Earth’s gravity.
All subsequent NASA missions remained uncrewed until Apollo 7.
This photo, dated December 21, 1968, shows the launch of Apollo 8 from the launch pad at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral) in Florida. Bill Anders, on board, described the event saying, “You could see the flames and the outer skin of the ship glowing; and charred, baseball-sized chunks flying behind us. It was an eerie feeling, like being a mosquito in the flame of a lighter.”
Finally, Apollo 8 launched Jim Lovell, Bill Anders and commander Frank Borman towards the moon.
This image of the Moon was taken by the Apollo 8 crew as they approached the Moon from Earth. The journey to the Moon, to orbit around it ten times and back to Earth took only six days.
They became the first people to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth.
This poster illustrates the trajectories of the Apollo missions, made possible by the proximity of the Moon to us. Newton’s law of universal gravitation, despite the fact that it has been superseded by Einstein’s General Relativity, is still good enough to be approximately true on most scales of the Solar System that it encompasses all the physics we need to travel from the Earth to the Moon, around it. we descend to its surface (if we wish) and return. Isaac Newton, indeed, did most of the driving.
Bill Anders had many famous quips, including, “I think Isaac Newton is doing most of the driving right now.”
The Apollo 8 astronauts were the first people to reach great enough distances from our planet to be able to view the entire Earth at once. Here, the closest (left) and most distant (right) images of Earth are shown as taken with the same Hasselblad camera.
They are, to date, the first of the 24 astronauts who have traveled to the Moon.
This Apollo 8 view of the lunar surface looks south at 162 degrees west longitude, showing the rugged terrain that is characteristic of the far lunar hemisphere. Highly cratered features, including many craters-within-craters, indicate its age, while the absence of maria reveals a greater crustal thickness than the nearby side. This marked the first time the far side of the Moon had ever been seen with human eyes.
Circling the moon ten times before returning, they captured a total of 862 photos.
Many of the most detailed pictures of the Moon taken by the Apollo astronauts were taken when the Sun was close to the lunar horizon from the astronauts’ point of view, as it allowed for long shadows and much visible relief along the supermoon. cratered surface.
Most of the photos were of the lunar surface, including many in unprecedented detail.
A sight that escaped the human eye until Apollo 8 was that of flying over the sunlit lunar surface and looking at the edge or limb of the Moon. While in direct sunlight, even the hilly and heavily cratered terrain of the Moon looks relatively featureless and washed out.
But the most iconic and influential photo of all, taken by Bill Anders, highlighted something bigger: Earthrise.
The first photo of “Earthrise” was taken with a black and white camera. While iconic, a second photograph taken soon after, with a color camera, is perhaps the most widely circulated photograph ever taken of planet Earth.
Anders noted poetically: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”
This photograph shows the first human-eye view of Earth rising above the Moon’s limb, taken just minutes after the original Earthrise photo (black and white) was taken. The discovery of Earth from space, with human eyes, remains one of the most iconic achievements in the history of our species. Apollo 8, which took place during December 1968, was one of the essential precursor missions to a successful moon landing. This photo is arguably the most environmentally influential photo ever taken.
It was Anders’ only trip to space.
The Apollo 8 prime crew, Commander Frank Borman (L), Jim Lovell (center) and Bill Anders (R), in front of the Saturn V stack and its mobile launch tower on October 9, 1968. Two months later, they I would successfully launch and reach the Moon: a first for mankind.
Anders died on June 7, 2024 in a plane crash.
Bill Anders, left, is sprayed with a sock by his son Greg Anders in this photo from 2008. Bill Anders remained an active pilot throughout his life, as evidenced by this recent photo (taken in 2008) .
Only six Apollo astronauts are currently alive.
This Dec. 10, 2008, photo shows the three Apollo 8 astronauts together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8. As of June 9, 2024, only Jim Lovell is still alive, one of the last six remaining Apollo-era astronauts. along with Fred Haise, Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt, Charles Duke, David Scott and Buzz Aldrin.
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals and no more than 200 words.
#RIP #Apollo #astronaut #Bill #Anders #rediscovered #Earth
Image Source : bigthink.com