Space... The last great unknown.
NASA's mission... To unravel the mysteries
of mankind's final frontier...
To search for new knowledge
and understanding... Godspeed, John Glenn.
And to lead us towards a peaceful
and unified future in space.
To the Moon and to the planets beyond.
The Eagle has landed.
We applaud NASA's greatest achievements
and explore how their impacts
continue to shape how we view
our place in the universe.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
For the eyes of the world... Absolutely incredible.
Now look into space... Okay, here we go.
To the Moon and to the planets beyond.
Lift-off.
And we set sail on this new sea
to solve these mysteries, to solve them
for the good of all mankind.
**
1957 heralds the unprecedented orbit
of the sputnik satellite,
launched by the Soviet union.
This milestone sends waves of fear
throughout the U.S. government
about the technological superiority
Of their cold war enemy.
Shortly thereafter, a federal organization
whose sole purpose is spearheading the American
space effort is born... The national aeronautics
and space administration, known as NASA.
Despite its cold war Genesis, NASA is
a distinctly civilian agency with a focus
on the peaceful exploration of space and science.
President Eisenhower wanted a space program
for science and technology
that was not based on the
military occupation of space.
And his emblem was space for peace.
He was deeply concerned that
if left to their own devices,
the military would occupy space
and take the high ground.
Had that occurred, you would never have seen
any of the great accomplishments
in science or engineering that embraced the world.
Thanks to Eisenhower’s
forward-thinking administration,
NASA remains the world's leading
manned-and-unmanned- space-research agency
since its inception in the late 1950s,
setting the precedent for all present
and future spacefaring nations.
Ladies and gentlemen,
today we are introducing to you
and to the world these seven men
who have been selected to begin training
for orbital space flight.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are
the nation's Mercury astronauts.
On April 9, 1959, NASA introduces the world
to the Mercury seven...
The astronauts selected to pilot America's
first manned space program.
These men immediately become national heroes.
Project Mercury's first goal
is to put a solo human into Earth's orbit...
Which is named Freedom 7.
Freedom 7 was America's first
foray into human space flight,
and it came at a rather difficult period in time,
because three weeks before the launch of Freedom 7,
Russia had successfully launched
Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human in space.
From the Mercury seven, astronaut Alan Shepard
is chosen to become the first
American to fly in space.
He pilots the Mercury-Redstone
launch vehicle, a hybrid
of a U.S. army ballistic missile
and a research and development rocket
Modified for human flight.
And on may 5, 1961, Shepard leaves cape Canaveral
and leads the United States into a new era
of manned space exploration.
Flight, this is m&o.
Go ahead, m&o.
All subsystems status green.
Roger, m&o. Understand all systems green.
60 seconds and counting.
T-minus one minute and counting.
- Status check... pressurization. - Go.
Lox tanking. You are go.
Water systems. Go.
T-minus 30 seconds.
Mercury capsule, go.
All pre-start panel lights are correct.
The ready light is on.
T-minus 15 seconds.
Check Mercury umbilical.
Mercury umbilical clear.
Mercury is entering flight zone.
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7... 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Engine start.
Ignition.
Well, Roger. Lift-off, and the clock has started.
This is Freedom 7 reading you loud and clear.
The fuel is go.
1.2 G.
Cabin at 14 psi.
Oxygen is go.
All systems are go.
Flight lasts 15 minutes and follows
a parabolic trajectory,
arcing over the Earth's surface
to land in the ocean 302 miles downrange.
The main scientific objective of project Mercury
is to determine man's capability
in the space environment and the conditions under
which astronauts would work.
In contrast to Yuri Gagarin's flight,
which was effectively an automated flight...
Gagarin had the ability
to control the spacecraft, but didn't...
Shepard's flight allowed him
to exercise some control over the spacecraft.
He's going to hand-control movements now.
Switching to manual control of the pitch attitude.
So Shepard genuinely took
real control of the spacecraft.
He wasn't just there for the ride.
He wasn't simply baggage.
After re-entry, the capsule of Freedom 7
lands by parachute in the Atlantic ocean,
with Alan Shepard paving the way
for every NASA astronaut
and manned mission to come.
The initial Mercury manned space flight
certainly helped lift the spirits in America
of people who felt that
the Russians were racing ahead,
that they'd been eclipsed with sputnik,
they'd been eclipsed with Yuri Gagarin,
in the first months of a president
who had criticized the government it replaced
for sitting on their hands while the Russians
rocked away into the future.
So, it was vital to restore American pride
and to mobilize a can-do spirit
so that, weeks later, when Kennedy announced
the decision to go to the Moon,
people could believe it.
President Kennedy: I believe that this nation
Should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out,
of landing a man on the Moon
and returning him safely to the Earth.
Freedom 7 was a vital component
of Kennedy's Moon program
that had been decided before Alan Shepard
first went into orbit.
And, in fact, the announcement
of that decision was held back
until Alan Shepard's flight
on the 5th of may, 1961.
Freedom 7 had to happen
for Kennedy's commitment to go to the Moon
to be publicly announced
and to be a funded program.
Otherwise, we would probably not
have been on the Moon even yet.
Freedom 7 is only the beginning
of Al Shepard's space-flight career.
He serves as chief of the astronaut office,
and then, in 1971, flies to the
Moon as commander of Apollo 14.
Human space flight has changed
dramatically since 1961.
Today's flights are complex, multi-crew,
multinational missions,
working together in the spirit
of international collaboration.
But the legacy of Freedom 7, Alan Shepard,
and the pioneering Mercury project
Will be remembered every time
NASA launches humans into space.
Godspeed, John Glenn.
Roger.
The clock is operating.
We're under way.
Oh, that view is tremendous.
Beautiful.
Coming up, NASA's first spacewalk
doesn't go according to plan.
The flight director says, "get back in."
This is Jim.
As we celebrate NASA's greatest achievements,
the epic spacewalk of
astronaut Ed White is momentous.
Once president Kennedy announces plans
to land Americans on the Moon
by the end of the 1960s, NASA gets to work
developing the techniques needed to support
these future Moon missions.
NASA unveils its second manned
human space-flight program,
known as project Gemini, in January 1962.
Gemini Bridges the Mercury and Apollo programs,
designed to test the endurance
of astronauts and spacecraft
for extended Moon missions.
Flights to the Moon would
take over a week to complete, and so
one of Gemini’s main aims was to establish
the ability of humans to withstand
long-duration space flight, to understand
the physiological effects
of spending that much time
in a zero-gravity environment.
Project Gemini also develops techniques
for rendezvous and docking spacecraft in orbit,
refines atmosphere re-entry
and splashdown procedures
so specific landing sites are reached,
and perfects spacewalking.
For an astronaut to walk
on the surface of the Moon, they must first leave
the safety of the spacecraft.
E.V.A. stands for extra-vehicular activity,
which means the astronaut
is working outside of the confines
of the spacecraft essentially in free space.
It was critical as a part
of the preparations for the lunar landing
because one of the main
objectives of the lunar landing
is to work outside of the spacecraft,
To leave the lunar module
and work in the lunar surface environment.
It was also very important to be able
to leave the spacecraft in the event
that any repairs were required.
The first NASA mission to attempt an E.V.A.
Is Gemini IV, with the unofficial goal
of proving the U.S.
Could catch up to the Soviets.
On June 3, 1965, astronauts Jim McDivitt
and Ed White leave cape Canaveral
in the program's new launch vehicle,
the Gemini-titan ii rocket.
Lift-off.
We have a lift-off at 16 minutes after the hour.
It's climbing very nicely.
We have a roll program initiated.
We have staging,
and it's been confirmed here on the ground.
Thrust looks good, flight.
Thrust looks good on the second stage.
And McDivitt, in a very, very calm voice, said,
"it looks great up here."
Final status check.
After their third orbit around Earth,
Ed white opens the hatch
of the Gemini capsule and makes history,
becoming the first American spacewalker.
Okay, feet are out.
He's floating free.
Tethered to the spacecraft, Ed White floats
200 miles above the Earth, traveling
at 17,000 miles per hour.
The footage of Ed White's E.V.A.
Is one of the most recognizable
and iconic set of images
from the early period of the space program.
Ed White's E.V.A. proves the United States could match
early Soviet achievements,
with NASA training and hardware
key to winning the space race to the Moon.
However, NASA's first spacewalk
doesn't go completely to plan.
A communications problem means that mission control
can't establish radio contact with Gemini IV
for the majority of the E.V.A.
Gemini IV, Houston CAPCOM.
Ground control were very concerned
because the astronauts were losing track of time.
The people on the ground
were frantically trying to get a signal
To the astronauts to terminate the spacewalk.
If the astronauts
don't stick to the mission timeline,
Ed white could be spacewalking
on the night side of the Earth.
In total darkness, it would be extremely difficult
to maneuver back to the capsule.
Gemini IV, Houston CAPCOM.
Finally, Jim McDivitt
notices and fixes an incorrect
switch configuration in the capsule that reopens
communication channels with mission control.
And as he did that, Jim McDivitt said,
"we better see... we better
find out what CAPCOM think."
CAPCOM got the signal,
and the immediate response was...
The flight director says, "get back in."
This is Jim.
Got any message for us?
Gemini IV, get back in.
Okay.
So, the audio coming from CAPCOM
is essentially mission control
telling the astronauts to stop playing about
and get back into the capsule.
Roger. We've been trying to talk to you for a while here.
No, back in. Come on.
I'm coming.
Okay.
Ed White's E.V.A.
Lasts just 23 minutes, but NASA learns
a very important lesson about how humans operate
in the vacuum of space.
NASA discovered that E.V.A. Is difficult.
Working in that space suit,
which is very constraining,
is really exhausting, and the subsequent
Gemini E.V.A.s all led to the astronauts
returning to the capsule
in a really overheated, exhausted state.
Eight Gemini missions later, astronaut buzz Aldrin,
who would later walk on the Moon
alongside Neil Armstrong, conducts
the first extensive E.V.A.
Gemini XII, Houston CAPCOM.
One minute to E.V.A. Record.
Beautiful job.
His success is attributed to his experience
as a scuba diver.
Aldrin pioneers the technique of underwater
neutral buoyancy training,
which simulates an environment similar to space.
Project Gemini flies 10 manned missions
between 1965 and 1966,
firmly putting the United States
ahead of the Soviets in the cold war space race.
To this day, the neutral buoyancy training
developed during the Gemini program
remains integral to astronaut training.
Coming up, the red planet reveals its mysteries.
"This is crazy.
This is science fiction."
As we count down NASA's all-time greatest
achievements, the red planet boldly stakes its claim.
NASA gets a bird's-eye view of planet Mars
from the mariner and viking
programs of the 1960s and '70s.
These historic missions give us our first views
of the mysterious red planet
both from orbit and on the dusty surface.
The exploration of Mars could be considered one
of NASA's greatest achievements.
The early period of its exploration
from 1965 to the late 1970s saw NASA
achieve the first landing
on the surface of Mars of two laboratories
that extensively analyzed, trenched,
and photographed the surface of two separate sites.
After the early pioneering Mars missions,
NASA goes on a hiatus.
It isn't until the early 1990s,
when they begin developing a new program
Of landers and rovers that could travel
across the martian surface to investigate
multiple scientific sites.
We'd seen with Apollo
how the lunar roving vehicle had been able
to move around various areas
of geologic interest around a common site.
We wanted to do that with Mars.
Get it mobile.
Not just have a lander that
sat there, but could move on.
And, you know, it's entirely coincidental
with the human spirit.
You climb one hill,
you see another and want to climb that.
And that's what these rovers are capable of doing.
After almost 20 years,
NASA triumphantly returns to the red planet
with the Mars Pathfinder mission.
Pathfinder's goal is to deploy
the first free-ranging wheeled robotic rover
on the martian surface.
Pathfinder houses a suite of scientific instruments
to analyze the martian atmosphere, climate,
and geology.
After a 309-million-mile flight,
the spacecraft arrives at Mars on July 1997.
In addition to its scientific objectives,
Pathfinder will test an innovative descent
and landing system.
The approach that was used
to try to successfully get
not just a lander, but a rover onto Mars...
if you'd have read about it
in books 10 years earlier,
this is science fiction."
If Pathfinder could successfully demonstrate
this new technology, it would forever change
the way scientific probes are deployed down
to a planet's surface.
The spacecraft enters the martian atmosphere
at 4 miles a second.
It heats up to more than 1,000 degrees centigrade,
but slows the spacecraft down enough
so parachutes can be deployed.
Mars' atmosphere has got such a low density
that even with these huge supersonic parachutes,
it's still moving faster than a car
speeding down a highway.
So the final stage for landing,
the lander and the rover were cocooned
within a huge assembly of airbags.
When Pathfinder impacted with Mars,
the first thing it did was bounce.
In Mars' much lower gravity,
those bounces continued.
There were more than 15 in total.
And then finally, when the
spacecraft came to a standstill,
it only had a matter of hours of battery power
for it to deflate its airbags,
turn it the right way up.
If any chain in that link had failed,
then this mission would have been consigned
to the scrap heap.
And we need to remember that
when it comes down to Mars,
less than half of the missions at that time
that had been dispatched to the red planet
had resulted in success.
Now down on the martian surface,
the Pathfinder lander opens,
releasing the rover to begin
its scientific investigation.
Pathfinder wasn't designed to go and test
if there were bugs or bacteria
or, indeed, if there's anything
that existed on Mars in the past
or at the present time.
It was a geological exploration mission.
However, the Pathfinder mission
did suggest that Mars may have
had a wetter, warmer past,
and where there's water, there's always
a possibility for life.
Collecting over 8 million measurements,
16,500 images,
and outliving its design life by 12 times,
Pathfinder's unprecedented mission
reshaped long-held scientific theories about Mars.
But perhaps Pathfinder's greatest contribution
is how it has paved the way for NASA's continuing
exploration of the red planet.
Pathfinder led to spirit and opportunity
in the new century.
2004, they landed.
More than 10 years, opportunity was moving
across the surface, visiting different sites,
traveling more than 25
kilometers across the surface.
A mission that was designed
to last for three months
has lasted more than 10 years,
and that has been followed
by an extraordinary new level of capability
with the 1-ton curiosity lander...
that, lowered on a sky crane, is the new way
we will be sending big landers and rovers to Mars.
Time to see where our curiosity will take us.
And in 2020, a copy of that vehicle
with different instruments will gather up samples
and leave them at a location
that a future lander will visit
for returning to Earth.
And that itself will be precursor
to the first human footprints
on the red planet, which could easily come
in the 2030s.
But the missing link
that made our modern rovers possible
was the Pathfinder mission.
What a tremendous legacy to have.
What NASA achieved in that magical summer of 1997,
deploying for the first time
a martian rover, really paved the way
for the successes and the future explorations
that the agency is currently
planning for the red planet.
NASA's innovative Mars rovers
continue to rewrite our understanding
of the red planet.
The legacy NASA began in 1997
with the Pathfinder mission
will, one day, culminate
in an international human expedition
to set foot on Mars.
Coming up, NASA boldly travels
into uncharted territory.
Those objects weren't stars.
They were all galaxies.
And a typical galaxy has 200 billion stars.
NASA's mission to explore the cosmos
continues as we venture beyond the asteroid belt
into the outer solar system.
In the early 1970s, there is a hunger
within the scientific community
to know more about the four outer planets
that dominate our solar system...
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
If more can be understood about these gas giants,
it could unlock secrets to the history
and formation of our Earth and the solar system.
Exploring the solar system in which we live
enables us to understand more
about how our own Earth was formed.
To understand our position in the evolution
of the solar system, let alone the galaxy,
we needed to get out there
beyond the asteroid belt and really get to grips
with what those planets were about.
That was Voyager.
NASA does not have the
luxury of time on their side.
This plan to explore the deepest, darkest,
and most inhospitable regions
of our solar system must take advantage
of a favorable alignment of the four outer planets
that would not occur again until the 22nd century.
The Voyager program, the Voyager missions,
that would allow the spacecraft to fly by planets
and use the gravitational energy
of the flyby to increase the velocity
of the spacecraft and change the trajectory,
change the direction
in which the spacecraft was moving
In order to encounter another planet.
So it was almost like a game
of planetary billiards.
This favorable planetary alignment
would occur in the late 1970s
and allow NASA to harness
gravitational assistance to slingshot
the two Voyager probes from one planet to the next.
Exploiting gravity in this way
not only reduces the need to carry
large quantities of fuel,
but also has a huge impact on the mission timeline.
Without the gravitational flybys
that this alignment made possible,
it would have taken 30 years
for the Voyagers to reach Neptune,
instead of 12 years, which was ultimately possible.
**
Launched a few weeks apart in the summer of 1997,
the twin probes of Voyager 1
and Voyager 2 set sail for their one-way tour
through our solar system.
After 18 months, the Voyager spacecraft
arrive at Jupiter in 1979.
The Voyager program really transformed
our view of the solar system,
and at Jupiter, Voyager showed us
the first-ever active volcanism
at a place other than the Earth
With Jupiter's innermost Moon, lo,
and they were found to be the signature
of an enormous volcanic plume
rising from the surface of this extremely
turbulent Moon of Jupiter.
It was really one of the landmark discoveries.
The dynamics of the famous great red spot,
this enormous storm, that has a size equivalent
to that of the Earth was studied in great detail.
The Saturn encounter was arguably
the most photogenic of the Voyager program.
One of the most famous discoveries
That Voyager made at Saturn
was the existence of what are known
as Shepherd moons.
In the outer ring system of Saturn,
there are two very small moons,
which were moving on either side of these rings,
And these became known as the Shepherd moons
Because the gravitational influence
Of those moons actually Shepherds
Those particles into a stable orbit
and makes the existence of these rings possible.
At this point, the two
Voyager probes part company to follow
very different trajectories,
with Voyager 1 heading to Saturn's largest Moon.
Titan is a very interesting Moon.
It's a very enigmatic Moon.
It was known from ground-based observations
that this largest Moon of Saturn had an atmosphere
which was very rich in methane,
and methane is of great interest
in terms of the ability
of a Moon or a planet to sustain life.
But a consequence of that was that the trajectory
would take the Voyager 1
spacecraft out of the plane
in which the planets move,
and therefore Voyager 1 would not be able
to encounter Uranus and Neptune.
However,Voyager 2 continues on its mission
towards Uranus and Neptune.
The real star of the Uranus encounter
was that the planet has quite
a significant magnetic field,
and the structure of this
magnetic field is very unusual.
It has a corkscrew shape...
Something that isn't seen
in any of the other planets.
And this is one of the most discoveries of Voyager
in terms of the planet itself.
Voyager 2 has its final planetary encounter
with Neptune in 1989...
The outermost of the gas giants
and the most distance planet in our solar system.
Neptune came as a complete surprise.
The atmosphere was found to be very dynamic.
It had this glorious blue color,
which had been hinted at
in telescopic observations from the Earth.
What really wasn't expected
was the amount of activity
in the atmosphere, the existence
of a dark blue storm very similar to the great
red spot of Jupiter, the existence of auroral
features on Neptune, the existence
of nitrogen geysers
on Neptune's largest Moon, Triton,
which has a surface that is the coldest surface
anywhere in the solar system.
But Voyager's farewell to the planets
isn't the end of their mission.
On their trajectories, it was only a matter of time
before both Voyager spacecraft
would leave our solar system.
And in August 2012, 35 years after it launched,
Voyager 1 becomes the first space probe
to pass into the region between the stars known
as interstellar space.
Voyagers 1 and 2 are now leaving the solar system.
They're the two man-made things that are the furthest away
from Earth of anything that we've ever made.
They're literally going through the boundaries
Of the solar system into interstellar space,
which doesn't sound like a big thing
when you're used to "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" or whatever,
but to actually leave the sphere
of influence of the sun,
leave the place we live in that way
is actually a fantastic achievement.
And it's the beginnings of us exploring
the rest of the universe.
That, to me, is iconic.
It's a major step.
The Voyager program has given us
a deeper understanding of our place within
and what exists beyond our solar system.
And in the 40 years since its launch in 1977,
it continues to explore
and enrich our understanding
of our place among the stars.
Coming up, the revolutionary telescope
that changes our understanding
of astronomy forever.
Never even knew that these planets existed
when Hubble was launched.
It's inconceivable that one mechanical marvel
could change our understanding of the cosmos,
but that's exactly what happens
with NASA's next innovation.
Named for the great American astronomer,
Edwin Hubble, the Hubble space
telescope is one of the largest
and most versatile scientific instruments in space.
NASA dreams up this
pioneering piece of engineering in the late 1960s
with the goal of answering
one of the biggest questions in astronomy.
The Hubble space telescope is a unique instrument.
It had some particular science goals,
and one of the major ones was to learn more
about how far away distant galaxies are,
and as a result of that, work out more accurately
how old the universe was.
By placing the telescope into Earth's orbit,
Hubble overcomes many of the limitations
of ground astronomy and peers deeper into
the universe than ever before.
The telescope was built because of this need
to try to get instruments outside the Earth's atmosphere,
To improve our view of the universe.
It's very difficult to do observations
that are very precise from the ground
Because the atmosphere gets in the way.
Movement in the atmosphere makes images less sharp
than they would be if you could
view things from space.
So being up above the atmosphere gives you
this absolutely unrestricted view,
but also the atmosphere blocks
some of the important radiation
that astronomers like to use,
such as ultraviolet light and infrared light,
so Hubble gives us access
to a much broader spectrum of light
than we can see from the surface of the Earth.
Beginning in 1978, NASA leads
an international collaboration
with the European space agency
to design and construct the most sophisticated
space telescope ever built.
Complete with 400,000 components
and 26,000 miles of wiring,
Hubble is carried into orbit
by a space shuttle in 1990.
Close and lock your visors,
and you all have a good trip.
Roger that.
We are go for main engine start.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
And lift-off of the space shuttle discovery
with the Hubble space telescope,
our window on the universe.
Overall program.
Roger all,discovery.
The telescope is deployed
at an altitude of 380 miles... The space shuttle's
highest orbit to that date.
You got a go for H.S.T. Deploy ops.
That's outstanding. Thank you.
First glimpse, the space telescope
Looks like it's in great shape.
Roger that.
Thank you.
Now, outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere,
Hubble will unlock secrets to the universe
no one could have imagined.
Hubble has rewritten
the astronomical textbooks in so many ways.
We've all seen the spectacular images
that have been sent back.
We've seen areas where stars are being created...
The "pillars of creation" image
in the Eagle nebula.
We've seen what happens at the end of stars' life
where we've got the supernova remnants.
And we've seen wonderful images of entire galaxies.
You know... island universes,
collections of billions of stars.
And you ask 100 different astronomers,
and you get 100 different favorite Hubble images.
The Hubble space telescope
has been incredibly successful.
It was designed for seven years of life,
and here we are, more than three times
past its design life.
Hubble is the only space telescope
designed to be serviced
by astronauts while in orbit.
Between 1993 and 2009, five space shuttle missions
repair and upgrade the telescope
to keep it equipped with cutting-edge technology.
Because of the shuttle's ability
to go up to Hubble and fix it,
but also take up new technology,
it's been possible to convert Hubble
into a 1970s-designed spacecraft
and telescope into a
1990s/2000-designed spacecraft.
So, one very good example of that
is that there is a small patch of sky
where, when Hubble was launched,
there wasn't a single star visible.
Seven years later, they took up
a new camera to Hubble,
and they looked again at that area of space
to see if they could find any stars.
Known as the Hubble deep field,
the image that is captured
is perhaps the most significant of Hubble's career.
The Hubble deep field
is a very, very long exposure,
and the deep field was the first attempt
to look as far out into the distant reaches
of the universe as it's possible to go.
Hubble was tasked with looking
at what seemed to be a blank field of sky.
It was in the constellation of Fornax.
And in terms of size, this was a size of sky
smaller than a 1-millimeter-
by-1-millimeter square drawn on your thumb
and held out at arm's length.
What Hubble did on more than 800 orbits
is look at that same patch of
sky again and again and again,
catching more and more photons,
and it was an exposure time
of nearly a million seconds.
What emerges are 10,000 dots.
But those objects weren't stars.
They were all galaxies.
And a typical galaxy has 200 billion stars.
For me, this is the most mind-blowing image
that's ever been taken in astronomy.
The impact of the deep field is particularly remarkable
because you can see all these
faint smudges of light that are galaxies
that were being born before our own solar system
galaxy ever existed.
The Hubble telescope is responsible
for capturing some of the most
detailed deep-space images ever taken,
with many observations
leading to breakthroughs in astrophysics.
It's hard to quantify the contribution
that Hubble has made.
In particular, it's helped us learn
About the age of the universe.
We didn't know that very precisely
Before Hubble was launched,
and now we can say the universe
is about 14 billion years old,
give or take a little bit.
And that's a major advance.
But it hasn't just given us information on that.
We can now study planets
orbiting other stars and even examine
their atmospheres using the instrumentation
that's on board Hubble.
We never even knew that these planets existed
when Hubble was launched.
The biggest contribution
of Hubble, I think, the public imagination
as to what lies out there, how exciting it is,
how wonderful astronomy is,
how beautiful the universe is,
how extraordinarily humbling it
is to sit and look at pictures
from light-years away of objects and structures
light-years across.
And in a world that's struck
with its own deeply incisive
and divisive concerns and difficulties,
lifting our spirits
to the wonders of the heavens can be
a greatly satisfying pastime,
and something to turn to that just lights up
a whole new understanding about what we are
as human beings.
Whether meeting manned- space-flight milestones...
We have lift-off.
Or spearheading deep-space research,
NASA pushes our technological
and intellectual boundaries with each
of its monumental achievements.
But the greatest of them all
must surely be visiting another world.
The Eagle has landed.
In its top-five achievements,
NASA continues to blow our minds
and expand the edges of innovation
as it boldly leads mankind into the future.
With the explicit goal of taking humans
to the Moon and back.
Originally intended to be a standard Earth-orbit mission,
this becomes the boldest decision
in the history of human exploration.
Rumor had it that the Russians were preparing their cosmonauts
for a lunar mission, so NASA opts to send the
three-man crew of Apollo 8
across the vast ocean of space,
orbit the Moon, and hopefully return
safely to the Earth.
Apollo 8 was the most audacious
human space-flight mission in history.
This mission was going to go
hundreds of times further in distance
than what had been achieved
until then in low-Earth orbit.
Although they had tested out all of the hardware
and the systems in Earth orbit,
they had never left Earth orbit with humans,
so it was a big risk.
It really was starting
human exploration of deep space.
With its new lunar objective,
Apollo 8 would not only keep the U.S.
Ahead in the space race,
but also set record-breaking
technological benchmarks.
The importance of Apollo 8 for the program
was that we needed to demonstrate
that we could operate the Apollo spacecraft
in an environment that no manned spacecraft
had ever worked before between Earth and Moon,
where there was continuous sunlight 24 hours a day,
and that the thermal control
and that the communications
at those great distances could operate in this
completely new environment,
and that the rocket motors could fire it
into and out of lunar orbit...
Essential for a landing.
The Apollo 8 astronauts
become the first human beings
to harness the brute force
of the mighty Saturn v rocket,
the most powerful machine ever built by man.
It was the first time that a human crew
had ridden a Saturn v rocket.
NASA took this audacious risk
of not only putting a human crew on board,
but also sending them on a mission
way beyond high-Earth orbit,
only a few thousand miles away.
This mission was going to go
a quarter of a million miles.
NASA's revised mission
leaves Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman,
Jim Lovell, and bill Anders
preparing for a launch nearly
three months ahead of schedule.
And in December 1968, Apollo 8 is ready
to make history.
**
Vehicle now is completely pressurized.
45 seconds.
Final reports coming from Frank Borman
aboard the spacecraft.
T-minus 15, 14, 13... 12, 11, 10, 9...
We have ignition sequence start.
The engines are on.
4, 3, 2, 1.
We have lift-off.
Lift-off!
The clock is running.
Clock's clear.
Clock started, frank.
Roger, clock.
The tower is clear.
Apollo 8, you're looking good.
Roger.
The weight of a warship lifting into the air.
It was just an enormous machine.
It was a phenomenal thing to watch.
Apollo 8, Houston.
Your trajectory and guidance are go. Over.
Thank you, Michael.
Yeah, you're looking real good, frank.
**
Apollo 8, Houston.
You are go for staging. Over.
Thank you, Houston.
Apollo 8.
The first stage was very smooth,
And this one was smoother.
Apollo 8, you are go for... Over. Go for...
Here we were, leaving Earth
and breaking that bond with our home planet
to place men within the gravitational grip
of another world in space.
It was awesome.
Astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders
become the first humans to travel beyond
low Earth orbit.
After three days, Apollo 8 arrives at the Moon
and enters lunar orbit.
This is Apollo control, Houston.
There's a cheer in this room.
We've got it. We've got it.
Apollo 8 now in lunar orbit.
Apollo 8, Houston.
What does the old Moon
look like from 60 miles? Over.
The Moon is essentially gray.
No color.
We can see quite a bit of detail.
The craters are all rounded off.
There's quite a few of them.
Roger. Understand.
One of the mission's primary goals
Is to photograph planned landing sites
for future Apollo missions,
and over the next 20 hours,
the crew collects 700 images of the lunar surface
in unprecedented detail.
On their ninth orbit of the Moon,
The crew sends a Christmas Eve
message back to Earth,
which is watched by the largest
global television audience in history.
For all the people back on Earth,
the crew of Apollo 8 has a message
that we would like to send to you.
"In the beginning, god created
the heaven and the Earth, and the Earth was
without form and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep,
and god said, 'let there be light.'
and there was light."
This was no longer a nation
fulfilling its national aspirations,
but it was a world collectively represented
by three humans traveling
in orbit around another world
and invoking a spiritual sense of identity
that rose above the petty bickering.
It made people realize there was something
bigger, grander, and even more meaningful
to the human spirit.
And from the crew of Apollo 8,
we close with good night,
good luck, merry Christmas,
and god bless all of you,
all of you on the good Earth.
Another memento of the Apollo 8 mission is
a never-before-seen view of our home planet.
Known as "Earth rise,"
this photograph is snapped by
astronaut bill Anders and is believed to be
the most reproduced image in human history.
The pictures of Earth from space mobilized
an environmental movement
in the United States that we have an Earth
that's very fragile.
If we continue to rampage through its resources,
consuming them at the prodigious
and profligate rate
that we will soon have a dry and dusty bowl
such as that that we see in the world
We went to visit, the Moon,
and saw an Earth that was so different,
so beautiful, so full of life, but so fragile.
Apollo 8's successful
first flight to the Moon paves the way
for the lunar landings to follow and allows NASA
to achieve president Kennedy's goal
of placing a man on the Moon
by the end of the 1960s.
Perhaps Apollo 8's greatest legacy
is that in our quest to study the Moon,
humanity truly discovers the Earth,
and only by leaving our planet behind
can we look and see for the
first time our whole world.
Coming up, a space plane
right out of a Sci-Fi novel.
2, 1, zero.
And lift-off.
As we celebrate NASA's greatest achievements,
the groundbreaking shuttle is heralded
as the first foray into sustainable space flight.
NASA's space shuttle is the first
in a new breed of spacecraft.
Based on a radically new
approach to space travel, the goal...
To replace the existing method
of launching costly manned capsules
on expendable rocket boosters
with a reusable spacecraft.
Not only would such a vehicle
reduce the cost of space exploration,
increasing America's access
to Earth's orbit, but it could also support
NASA's ambitious future
of permanently manned space stations.
The shuttle was conceived
as a reusable launch vehicle
when it was obvious that
throwing these rockets away after only one use
was going to be unsustainable
if the flight rates went up and up and up.
It would bankrupt the space program.
The design of the space shuttle
resembles a conventional aircraft
With two wings and a tail.
In this configuration,
the shuttle is more like a space plane
that can glide back to Earth,
land on a runway, and be ready
for its next mission.
A unique feature of the shuttle
design is its large cargo bay,
allowing the vehicle to ferry
a wide variety of scientific payloads into orbit.
This would enable NASA to easily deploy satellites
and, for the first time,
capture and return payloads back to Earth.
The shuttle was really
meant to be a multifaceted tool.
It was a logical thing to do, a logical step.
In particular, you're looking for a tool
that you could use to mend spacecraft,
a tool that you could use
to service an international
space station, for example, or any space station.
You could launch things from it.
After nearly a decade of development and testing,
NASA's space shuttle fleet
finally goes into service in April 1981
and launches a new era of manned space exploration.
Firing chain is armed.
Go for main engine start.
Okay... Pre-starts complete.
Thank you, Tony.
We're ready to go.
Copy that. On my mark.
3, 2, 1, mark.
2, 1, zero.
And lift-off.
On the shoulders of the space shuttle,
America will continue the dream.
The space shuttle spreads its wings
for this journey into history.
Roll program.
Roger roll, Discovery.
Roll program complete.
4 1/2 million pounds of hardware and humans,
heads down, wings level,
on the proper alignment for its 8 1/2-minute ride to orbit.
Go with throttle up.
Roger. Go throttle up.
The space shuttle is traveling
almost 2,600 miles an hour,
at 21 miles in altitude, 24 miles downrange.
Standing by for solid rocket booster separation.
A good solid rocket booster separation.
The main engine steering
the shuttle on a pinpoint path
to its preliminary orbit.
Between 1981 and 2011, NASA's fleet
of five space shuttles
flies a total of 135 missions.
During their 30 years of service,
The shuttles carry more than 350 astronauts
to and from orbit and allow mankind to push
the boundaries of humanity's space exploration.
The shuttles launch and repair
hundreds of satellites,
act as orbital science laboratories,
and assist in the construction
of the international space station,
the largest and most complex structure
assembled in space.
The shuttle's main objective was,
of course, as a routine
ferry back and forth between the surface
of the Earth and near space.
But clearly no other vehicle at the time
on the drawing board or conceived
could possibly have assembled the 400-ton
international space station
that has been permanently
manned since the year 2000
and may very well have at least
three decades of life for scientists
from all over the world.
Originally billed as a vehicle
that would launch twice a month,
in reality, shuttle missions average four a year.
And the operational costs of the program
are higher than anticipated
due to the extensive maintenance required
to keep a reusable spacecraft in service.
The safety of the vehicle is also questioned
following the tragic losses
of space shuttles Challenger and Columbia
and their respective crews.
But inquiries into both incidents
reveal that management problems
at NASA were to blame
rather than flight engineer complacency
Or the reliability of the shuttle hardware,
concluding that, tragically, both disasters
could have been avoided.
Sometimes the failings of the shuttle
overshadow its achievements, but make no mistake.
This experimental space plane
sets a staggering benchmark for the future
of reusable spacecraft.
I think the lasting legacy for the shuttle
is that it is possible to both
bring the vehicle back and astronauts back
in the same vehicle that they went up on,
and that there is at least no other practical possibility
of reducing cost to orbit,
but there's still a long way to go yet.
What started as a truly space-age concept
evolves into an iconic vehicle
like no machine ever built.
The space shuttle is a gateway to Earth orbit that,
for millions around the world,
symbolizes the adventure and spirit of exploration.
You have to sort of stand to one side
and not ignore the fact that
a huge amount has been achieved
by this general-purpose tool
that has allowed us to do a huge amount
that a lot of us have benefited from
In terms of the machinery we can get up there,
machinery we can maintain.
Even if it's from people understanding the universe
because they can see the images from Hubble
That was launched to the shuttle
then managed to shuttle missions.
Just bringing people together...
That can only be good for mankind.
The shuttle played a huge part in that,
And we should never forget it.
Retiring in 2011,
NASA's space shuttle fleet paves the way
for the vital next step in man's space flight
and enables the technological world we now enjoy
and should be forever heralded
as one of NASA's greatest achievements.
The end of a historic journey,
and to the ship that has led the way time and time again,
we say farewell, Discovery.
Coming up, a home in space
like we've never seen before.
You cannot now put the genie back in the bottle.
A precedent has been set.
This is the way forward.
As we count down NASA's all-time greatest achievements,
the International Space Station
redefines what we call home.
Undoubtedly the greatest
international collaboration in the history
of human space exploration,
the International Space Station is a habitable science laboratory
parked in low Earth orbit... **
home to a multinational crew of six astronauts
who live and work in space,
the I.S.S. Advances our long-duration space
flight capabilities.
But despite being the blueprint
for global space cooperation,
the international space station
was born of the cold war.
Back in the 1980s, relations between
the Soviet union and the United States
were still pretty much in a deep freeze.
Now, NASA had plans for its own
space station, Freedom.
But the budgets were ballooning,
And NASA realized that its aspirations
for having a long-duration
capability for space flight
were gonna be pretty much on the shelf
for as long as the shuttle program was going on.
At the same time, the Soviet union
had spectacularly built up
human space flight experience
through the series of Salyut space stations
culminating in the Mir program.
NASA had done nothing
like this since Skylab in the early 1970s.
Although the Skylab program
had been a resounding success for NASA,
the agency is in desperate
need of space station Freedom to advance
its orbital operations.
When the Soviet union collapses
at the beginning of the 1990s,
it gives NASA a golden opportunity
to support and collaborate
with the new Russian space agency.
And in 1993, plans for space station Freedom
are merged with Russia's proposed Mir-2 project
to form the first international
space station program.
A global partnership of 15 nations works together
despite differences in language, politics,
and manufacturing styles
to plan and complete the greatest
engineering project in history.
You should think of the space station
as a gigantic Lego set, where bits and pieces
are launched into space
and then bolted together actually in orbit.
It's far too big to be launched from the ground,
and we actually don't have a launch vehicle
that's physically capable of taking
that whole structure into space on its own,
so you have to launch it in pieces
and assemble it in orbit.
The modular design of
the international space station
allows different bays and components
to be engineered and manufactured
By five different space agencies around the world.
This unprecedented technological
and political partnership sees Russian,
Japanese, European, and Canadian space agencies
working alongside NASA
to operate and service the I.S.S.
The international nature
of the space station as a program
rather than an individual mission or event
that NASA has ever achieved,
to bring together the nations of the world
to what is now the full
international space station.
The international space station
is a unique scientific platform
where research into biology, physics, and astronomy
converges with technological
developments in innovation.
In this orbiting laboratory,
crew members conduct advanced experiments
that would not be possible on Earth
with the unified goal
of sharing breakthroughs in knowledge for
the betterment of humanity.
The I.S.S. Truly is humanity's
orbital space science outpost.
The research that's being done on board
is giving us new insights
into so many different areas,
from material science to fundamental physics
because some of the insights gained
from instruments on the station
are giving us new ideas about the structure
and possible future fate of the universe.
In 2005, the station's
sophisticated facilities opened up
to institutes and scientists
outside of government agencies,
leading to economic, medical,
and environmental innovations for Earth.
With all eyes on mankind's next
giant leap in space exploration,
the station is paving the way for future missions
to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Our mission to Mars is gonna
be a very difficult thing to do.
Although we have the basic technology,
it's going to take at least seven or eight months
to send people to Mars.
Then they have to stay there for about a year
before they can come back,
which is another seven or eight months.
So we're really talking about a round trip
that lasts more than two years.
The difficult logistic point
is to work out how to survive
For that length of time,
not just from a physical point of view,
But actually if you're going on a long journey,
You might have to learn how to grow food,
and one of the things that the space station
is a good platform for is learning how to grow things
in low-gravity conditions.
What we have learned is
how multiple agencies from different parts
of the world can collaborate
even when there are political differences,
and if we are go to Mars, in my mind,
it's almost guaranteed to be
an international mission.
The international space station
is the largest and most complex construction
Ever assembled in space, a project which,
after a decade of success, has proven its worth
as an out-of-this-world science lab,
pioneering techniques for building
And maintaining equipment in orbit.
Perhaps the station's
greatest accomplishment is its blueprint
for achieving goals together that single nations
alone could not accomplish.
The I.S.S. Program from the start
was politically driven, but what's emerged from it
has been a fantastic tribute to cooperation
between so many space agencies around the world.
You cannot now put the genie back in the bottle.
A precedent has been set.
This is the way forward,
and it's a great way for settling
political difficulties...
Sleeves rolled up, working together.
Just two decades since the end of the cold war,
the international space station
embodies what global cooperation can achieve.
The I.S.S. Is humanity's first
firm foothold for life in space,
our springboard for visiting destinations
beyond Earth's orbit,
and another giant leap in mankind's quest
to explore the final frontier.
Coming up, NASA conducts a life-saving mission.
Houston, we've had a problem.
Stand by. They got a problem.
- We got more than a problem. - Okay, listen, you guys.
The Apollo lunar space program is cemented in time
for the scale of its ambition and accomplishments.
But one of the greatest moments in NASA's history
is nearly its worst.
In April 1970, the Apollo program is in full swing.
The last 16 months has seen 12 men fly to the Moon
and four walk on its surface.
Astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert
trained alongside Apollo 13 commander
and veteran astronaut Jim Lovell for NASA's
most ambitious mission yet.
Apollo 13 really went to take a step further
than the previous two Apollos
that had been on the Moon.
They had landed in areas called mare,
the sort of flat plain,
so you only looked at the rocks
that were right on the surface,
and there's a lot of interest
in what's happening down below
the surface of those mare.
So, Apollo 13's aim was to go to an impact crater
where some huge collision
had happened with an asteroid.
That impact had thrown material out
and it dug it out from low regions of the crust,
and Apollo 13 was targeted to try and get to rocks
that were characteristic
of a different age of the Moon
compared to Apollo 12.
Apollo 13 launches to explore the Moon
and follow in the successful
lunar footprints of Apollos 11 and 12.
But just 56 hours into the mission,
the spacecraft suffers a devastating malfunction.
Apollo 13, Houston.
We'd like you to stir up your cryo tanks.
Okay. Stand by.
About 56 hours, all three of us heard
a rather large bang, just one bang.
Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.
This is Houston. Say again, please.
Houston, we've had a problem.
Stand by. They got a problem.
- We got more than a problem. - Okay, listen, you guys.
Fuel cells one and three are offline.
Right.
That's what we're reading.
When an onboard oxygen tank ruptures,
two of the spacecraft's three fuel cells
begin bleeding precious power.
We got to get a pressure readout on that thing.
O2 quantity number two is zero.
That's the end right there.
I can't believe that.
The mood in mission control was immediately
one of disbelief.
I have absolutely no clue what happened.
Something happened to the fuel cells
And the oxygen tank.
When I looked up and saw both oxygen pressures...
One absolutely at zero
and the other one going down...
It dawned on me and I'm sure Jack and Fred
about the same time that we were, indeed,
in serious trouble.
Roger. We copy you're venting.
Not only is oxygen vital to keeping the crew alive,
but the spacecraft's three fuel cells
cannot generate power without it.
It was quite apparent to me
that it was just a question of time
that the command module was gonna be dead.
We were still 70 to 80 hours away from the Earth.
Without power, the spacecraft would shut down,
communications systems would die,
and the crew would be stranded in space.
Within two hours, the third
fuel cell had to be shut down.
That's the only means of electrical power
for everything needed to get the crew back
to Earth alive.
200,000 miles from Earth and trapped
in a dying spacecraft, the crew of Apollo 13 faces
a life-and-death crisis.
NASA has just one chance
to bring their men safely home.
We knew that the command
module was gonna lose power.
The only way to survive this situation
Was to transfer to the lunar module,
and we started going through
procedures to get power on.
The initial reaction was stabilization,
to get the whole mission stable
so that we could at least buy a bit of time.
Assign people to study
how we keep the crew alive and how we keep
our options open.
With its own independent life support,
power, and communication systems,
the lunar module acts as a lifeboat.
But with a limited 45-hour life-span intended
for a two-man crew, NASA ground teams
work around the clock to keep three men alive
for the 90-hour flight back to Earth.
The main difficulty that the astronauts had
is they were losing power all the time,
and they had to find a way
of maintaining power for the whole duration
of the flight.
To support three men for 3 1/2 days,
the whole way in which it was
operated had to change.
To combat the astronauts'
dwindling consumables, NASA instructs the crew
to power down the lunar module,
preserving the spacecraft's limited water
and electrical supply.
However, the crew suffers serious dehydration,
and the temperature inside
the lunar module plummets.
There was sort of a chilling coldness.
The walls were perspiring.
The windows were completely wet.
And it wasn't too healthy.
I recall that it was like
reaching into the freezer for the food.
There was ice forming on the inside of the windows.
The crew were beginning to suffer
Under those appalling conditions.
It was a dire state.
It was a real, real emergency situation.
The Apollo lunar space program
is one of NASA's most ambitious accomplishments,
but the Apollo 13 mission
nearly becomes a disaster.
Surviving on the minimal power
reserves of the lunar module,
the crew is further jeopardized
By the carbon dioxide buildup
on board the spacecraft.
When you breathe oxygen, you exhale carbon dioxide,
and that carbon dioxide, if you don't do
anything about it, builds up in the sealed
environment of the space capsule
and becomes a poison.
Lithium hydroxide cannisters
scrub the air supply of carbon dioxide,
but with the command module powered down,
the lunar module's scrubbing system is overworked,
designed to just support two men for two days,
not three men for four days.
It wasn't possible to take
the lithium hydroxide crystals
from the command module
and place them in the lunar module
Because the shapes were different.
The command module cannisters
were square cross-section,
and... believe it or not... The ones in the Lem
were round cross-section.
I mean, it could easily have been the end
of the rescue mission had they not solved it.
NASA has mere hours to engineer a system
that patches the square cannisters
into the lunar module life-support system
using only what the astronauts
have available to them.
Ground read us up a procedure
In order to adapt some of the cannisters,
and as they read this thing up,
Jim and I constructed one of these things.
Cut a piece of tape this long,
put it up there, do this, do that.
It worked a treat, you know.
Within an hour of switching it on,
The carbon dioxide levels were way down,
and they were through that really serious,
considerable problem.
There were moments when I didn't know
How much consumables we had,
whether we could make it back or not,
But in a situation like that,
there's only one thing you can do.
You just keep going, and you just keep thinking up
where you can get more consumables,
and so that's exactly what we did.
It is without question that one of NASA's
greatest triumphs during the Apollo 13 rescue
was the way mission control
successfully stretched out
the dwindling life-support consumables.
Had those consumables not been monitored
and economized as accurately,
the mission and the crew would've been lost.
In the entire history of human space flight
dating back to 1961, Apollo 13 was the most
dangerous episode in which the crew
has successfully survived.
What happened in mission control
and by the crew themselves
showed that the NASA spirit at the time was
absolutely up to the challenge not only of getting
human beings to the Moon,
but returning them to Earth safely
when you've got multiple
emergencies coming up that are threatening
your crew's survival again and again and again.
The extremely loud applause
as Apollo 13 comes through loud and clear on
the television display here.
I regard Apollo 13 as an immensely
impressive example of engineering.
The systems engineering, the organizational engineering
were so solid, were so intelligent,
were so well-structured that
when the accident happened, the organization was found
totally capable of dealing with it,
And I can't imagine why anybody
would want to be anything other than an engineer.
That could be made of this flight
is the initiative that people have
When suddenly faced with an unusual situation.
I think it's amazing the way
that people can respond so fast
to get this job done.
The safe return of the Apollo 13 crew
is a testament to the caliber and dedication
of the engineers and astronauts
of the Apollo lunar program
and is universally regarded as NASA's finest hour.
Coming up, an unimaginable task
with an impossible deadline.
For a magical moment, humanity was united as one.
NASA pushes our technological
and intellectual boundaries
with each of its monumental achievements,
but the greatest of them all must surely
be visiting another world.
I believe that this nation should commit itself...
To achieving the goal before this decade is out
of landing a man on the Moon
and returning him safely to the Earth.
No single space project in this period
will be more impressive to mankind
or more important for the long-range
Exploration of space.
And none will be so difficult
or expensive to accomplish.
On the 25th of may, 1961, president John F. Kennedy
challenges the United States
to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade
and do the other things not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
And perhaps the greatest engineering challenge
in the history of mankind,
NASA has a mere eight years
to pioneer the technology
to shoot men into deep space
and return them safely to the Earth.
But in 1961, rocket technology
isn't powerful enough to reach the Moon.
A lunar lander hasn't been designed.
Space suit technology is in its infancy.
And we don't even know if humans can survive
in the vacuum of space.
In 1961, walking on the Moon is science-fiction.
But by 1970, it must be science fact.
And in July 1969, Apollo 11 makes history
as Neil Armstrong and buzz Aldrin
become the first of 12
astronauts to walk on the Moon.
Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.
We copy you down, Eagle.
You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
We're breathing again.
Thanks a lot.
I'm at the foot of the ladder.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
The six Apollo lunar landing missions
demonstrated the most audacious attempt
to challenge humans on the technological frontiers
of the 20th century that could ever have been put
before a single group of people.
For a magical moment, humanity was united as one.
People were saying, "you did it for us."
It wasn't seen that the United States
Had set foot on the Moon.
It was the human race, and so, for me,
that's the magic of Apollo 11
and all of those subsequent missions.
In the afterglow of Apollo 11,
NASA lands five more exploration missions
on the surface of the Moon, each more advanced
and ambitious than the last.
Of the six Apollo lunar landing missions,
the last three were incredibly
productive scientifically
because they built on the previous flights
in a very big way.
They had a lunar module that could stay
three full working days on the surface,
that had a lunar roving vehicle
that could carry the crew miles
to different sites of geological
and scientific interest.
It carried a much larger suite
of experiments to operate for nearly 10 years
after the crew returned,
sending information back to scientists
all over the world.
That prodigious outpouring of data
was really one of the greatest achievements
of the whole Apollo program and transformed it
from a political objective
in getting to the surface
ahead of the Russians into a very,
very major scientific endeavor.
This unprecedented scientific
yield unlocks the history
and evolution of our planet
and the solar system, and the benefits
of NASA's Apollo program are even far more
wide-reaching for us all.
Sending human beings
to the Moon laid the groundwork
for exploration of the rest of our solar system...
sending robotic explorers off to Mars, Venus.
But they also laid the way
for international collaboration.
Sending people up to the international space station,
Working together for a common cause
Would not have been possible
without the technology developed
through the Apollo missions.
Hopefully, although it's NASA's greatest achievement to date,
There's gonna be plenty more
equally exciting achievements down the line
for exploring the solar system.
Between 1968 and 1972, 24 men fly to the Moon
and 12 walk upon its surface
for the benefit of all mankind.
The flags and footprints symbolize
not only NASA's greatest achievement,
but the achievement of an entire generation
and the promise of mankind's future in space.
It's the world taking the next steps.
It's not just NASA,
and NASA's been fantastic and led the way,
but all these voyages in space,
we're all doing this together.
Whatever the future may hold for space exploration,
it's clear that what NASA has achieved
in just a few decades has forever defined
how we live on our home planet
and how we will explore our future in space.
I personally like to think
the greatest achievement of NASA
is that it is a civilian-based agency,
actually international in its aspirations
to draw in a world community
of scientists and researchers
and to inspire the next generation
of students, scientists, and engineers
to literally go where
no one else has gone before, and be
the representational catalyst for all spacefaring nations
to follow it to the exploration of the solar system and beyond.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com
captions paid for by discovery communications