The Apollo Program: John F. Kennedy

The Apollo Program

On May 25, 1961, the 35th president of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy proposed to Congress his national goal of "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the 1960's; this was the Apollo Program. The Program was originally made as a successor to the Mercury project. Program Mercury had shuttles in orbit but the Apollo Program wanted to instead send people onto the moon.

Before NASA could send humans into space they had to go through a many of test and practice launches so the chance of failure or even death would be lessened or subdued entirely. The first two unmanned missions would be to test the service module engine and the command module heat shield. The

first of the two flights would be the AS-20, launched on February 26, flew high into altitude and returning to earth landing in the Atlantic Ocean. Second unmanned mission being the AS-202 launched on August 25, doing the same as the first but landing in the Pacific Ocean. After those two flew another unmanned mission, the AS-203 was sent into orbit to test new spaceship parts, fuel, system software for manned missions.

The first manned mission was Apollo 1. Before an actual flight could be done a test was planned called "plugs-out" on January 27, 1967. Before and during the test problems immediately started to arise. First an odor was found in the suits which delayed the launch. Then communication problems appeared putting the launch delayed again. The Apollo crew had been waiting aboard the ship during the delay, a fire had appeared inside the ship and had reached the crew had perished before the exit hatched could be opened. Changes were made to accommodate the tragic events; the fuel type, layout of the ship, system operating procedures, and removal of some items.

More unmanned missions proceeded, Apollo 4, the four being added to the name including the prior three unmanned and single manned mission instead of being named Apollo 2.