Moon

Welcome to my moon page. The moon is 240,000 miles from Earth. In 1959, scientists began to explore the moon with robot spacecraft. In that year, the Soviet Union sent a spacecraft called Luna 3 around the side of the moon that faces away from Earth. Luna 3 took the first photographs of that side of the moon. The word luna is Latin for moon. On January 27 1967, the crew of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died in a fire in their spacecraft during a launch test. As the horrible year of 1968(Assasinations of Martin Luther King Jr.,and Robert "Bobby" Kennedy and the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago) ended, Apollo 7 luanched with Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele. Apollo 8 orbited the moon and their crew Frank Borman, William Anders, and Jim Lovell brought home some Christmas cheer. Borman ended saying "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry christmas, and god bless all of you, all of you on the good earth". Apollo 9 and 10 sucessfully tested the Lunar Extersion Module (LM), the machine that would land men on the moon. On July 20, 1969 at 4:18 P.M. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the LM on the moon. 6 1/2 hours later Armstrong walked on the moon with more than a half a billion people watching. 4 months later, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean became the 3rd and 4th people to walk on the moon. On April 13, 1970, Apollo 13 exploded 35,000 miles from the moon. And the crew Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert(He replaced Ken Mattingly because of being exposed to German Measles)had to use the LM as a lifeboat, while Gene Kranz(Lead Flight Director) had to figure out how to get them home. They did. A year later, Apollo 14 landed on the moon with Alan Shepard(One of the Mercury 7 Astronauts)and Edgar Mitchell. On August first that same year, Dave Scott and James Irwin employed the Lunar Roving Vehicle which was used to explore regions within 5 km of the LM landing site. On April 20, 1972 the crew of Apollo 16 John W. Young and Charlie Duke walked on the moon while Ken Mattingly orbited the moon. About halfway back home, Mattingly got to do a Extra Vehicular Activity(EVA) or space walk. On December 11, 1972 Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt(Only Scientist to walk on the moon) became the last people to walk on the moon. 3 more Apollo missions were canceled(Crews 18: Richard Gordon, Commander Vance Brand, Command Module Pilot and Harrison Schmitt(He replaced Joe Engle on Apollo 17 after the cancellation of Apollos 18-20), Lunar Module Pilot. 19: Fred Haise(Apollo 13 LM Pilot)Commander William Pogue Comand Module(CM) Pilot and Gerald Carr Lunar Module Pilot. 20: Either Stuart Roosa, Pete Conrad or Edgar Mithchell would have been the Commander, Paul Weitz, Command Module Pilot, Jack Lousma, Lunar Module Pilot). More spacecraft went to the moon until January 1994, when the United States sent the orbiter Clementine. From February to May of that year, Clementine's four cameras took more than 2 million pictures of the moon. A laser device measured the height and depth of mountains, craters, and other features. Radar signals that Clementine bounced off the moon provided evidence of a large deposit of frozen water. The ice appeared to be inside craters at the south pole. The U.S. probe Lunar Prospector orbited the moon from January 1998 to July 1999. The craft mapped the concentrations of chemical elements in the moon, surveyed the moon's magnetic fields, and found strong evidence of ice at both poles. Small particles of ice are apparently part of the regolith at the poles. The SMART-1 spacecraft, launched by the European Space Agency in 2003, went into orbit around the moon in 2004. The craft's instruments were designed to investigate the moon's origin and conduct a detailed survey of the chemical elements on the lunar surface. Visit TheMainBelt