Category Archives: space exploration

Apollo 15 begins long trip home after launching lunar satellite


1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Wednesday, August 4, 1971) — Apollo 15 tonight fired its main engine behind the moon and blasted out of lunar orbit on the way home to earth just after dropping off a small satellite designed to orbit the moon for at least a year.

Astronauts leave Moon and dock safely


1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Monday, August 2, 1971, 1:11 p.m. ET) — Apollo 15 astronauts David R. Scott and James B. Irwin rocketed from the moon today and linked up with their mother ship, a first step home with a 230-pound cargo of lunar secrets won from that battered vault of space history. The launch followed a third and final walk on the moon where Scott paid tribute to the 16th century Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and his discovery about falling objects in gravity fields.

Spacemen find precious rock at crater


1971: Apollo 15 (NASA)

(Sunday, August 1, 1971) — Two Apollo 15 explorers radioed jubilantly today from a steep lunar mountainside that “we found what we came for,” a crystal-filled rock believed formed close to the time of the moon’s very creation. Continue reading Spacemen find precious rock at crater

JFK pledges bigger U.S. space effort

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WbYKkcP7vM

(Friday, May 5, 1961, 3:30pm ET) — President John F. Kennedy hailed his nation’s first manned shot into space today, and pledged “a substantially larger effort in that field” during a news conference. Continue reading JFK pledges bigger U.S. space effort