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By NASA
6 Min Read NASA Marshall Reflects on 65 Years of Ingenuity, Teamwork
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is celebrating its 65-year legacy of ingenuity and service to the U.S. space program – and the expansion of its science, engineering, propulsion, and human spaceflight portfolio with each new decade since the NASA field center opened its doors on July 1, 1960.
What many Americans likely call to mind are the “days of smoke and fire,” said Marshall Director Joseph Pelfrey, referring to the work conducted at Marshall to enable NASA’s launch of the first Mercury-Redstone rocket and the Saturn V which lifted Americans to the Moon, the inaugural space shuttle mission, and the shuttle flights that carried the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and elements of the International Space Station to orbit. Most recently, he said they’re likely to recall the thunder of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System), rising into the sky during Artemis I.
NASA’s Space Launch System, carrying the Orion spacecraft, launches on the Artemis I flight test on Nov. 16, 2022. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, led development and oversees all work on the new flagship rocket, building on its storied history of propulsion and launch vehicle design dating back to the Redstone and Saturn rockets. The most powerful rocket ever built, SLS is the backbone of NASA’s Artemis program, set to carry explorers back to the Moon in 2026, help establish a permanent outpost there, and make possible new, crewed journeys to Mars in the years to come.NASA/Bill Ingalls Yet all the other days are equally meaningful, Pelfrey said, highlighting a steady stream of milestones reflecting the work of Marshall civil service employees, contractors, and industry partners through the years – as celebrated in a new “65 Years of Marshall” timeline.
“The total sum of hours, contributed by tens of thousands of men and women across Marshall’s history, is incalculable,” Pelfrey said. “Together they’ve blended legacy with innovation – advancing space exploration and scientific discovery through collaboration, engineering excellence, and technical solutions. They’ve invented and refined technologies that make it possible to safely live and work in space, to explore other worlds, and to help safeguard our own.
The total sum of hours, contributed by tens of thousands of men and women across Marshall’s history, is incalculable.
Joseph Pelfrey
Marshall Space Flight Center Director
“Days of smoke and fire may be the most visible signs, but it’s the months and years of preparation and the weeks of post-launch scientific discovery that mark the true dedication, sacrifice, and monumental achievements of this team.”
Reflecting on Marshall history
Marshall’s primary task in the 1960s was the development and testing of the rockets that carried the first American astronaut to space, and the much larger and more technically complex Saturn rocket series, culminating in the mighty Saturn V, which carried the first human explorers to the Moon’s surface in 1969.
“Test, retest, and then fly – that’s what we did here at the start,” said retired engineer Harry Craft, who was part of the original U.S. Army rocket development team that moved from Fort Bliss, Texas, to Huntsville to begin NASA’s work at Marshall. “And we did it all without benefit of computers, working out the math with slide rules and pads of paper.”
The 138-foot-long first stage of the Saturn V rocket is lowered to the ground following a successful static test firing in fall 1966 at the S-1C test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Saturn V, developed and managed at Marshall, was a multi-stage, multi-engine launch vehicle that stood taller than the Statue of Liberty and lofted the first Americans to the Moon. Its success helped position Marshall as an aerospace leader in propulsion, space systems, and launch vehicle development.NASA “Those were exciting times,” retired test engineer Parker Counts agreed. He joined Marshall in 1963 to conduct testing of the fully assembled and integrated Saturn first stages. It wasn’t uncommon for work weeks to last 10 hours a day, plus weekend shifts when deadlines were looming.
Counts said Dr. Wernher von Braun, Marshall’s first director, insisted staff in the design and testing organizations be matched with an equal number of engineers in Marshall’s Quality and Reliability Assurance Laboratory.
“That checks-and-balances engineering approach led to mission success for all 32 of the Saturn family of rockets,” said Counts, who went on to support numerous other propulsion programs before retiring from NASA in 2003.
“We worked with the best minds and best equipment available, pushing the technology every day to deliver the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century,” said instrumentation and electronics test engineer Willie Weaver, who worked at Marshall from 1960 to 1988 – and remains a tour guide at its visitor center, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.
We worked with the best minds and best equipment available, pushing the technology every day to deliver the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century.
Willie Weaver
Former Marshall Space Flight Center Employee
The 1970s at Marshall were a period of transition and expanded scientific study, as NASA ended the Apollo Program and launched the next phase of space exploration. Marshall provided critical work on the first U.S. space station, Skylab, and led propulsion element development and testing for NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.
Marshall retiree Jim Odom, a founding engineer who got his start launching NASA satellites in the run-up to Apollo, managed the Space Shuttle External Tank project. The role called for weekly trips to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, which has been managed by Marshall since NASA acquired the government facility in 1961. The shuttle external tanks were manufactured in the same bays there where NASA and its contractors built the Saturn rockets.
This photograph shows the liquid hydrogen tank and liquid oxygen tank for the Space Shuttle external tank (ET) being assembled in the weld assembly area of the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF). The ET provides liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to the Shuttle’s three main engines during the first eight 8.5 minutes of flight. At 154-feet long and more than 27-feet in diameter, the ET is the largest component of the Space Shuttle, the structural backbone of the entire Shuttle system, and the only part of the vehicle that is not reusable. The ET is manufactured at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, Louisiana, by the Martin Marietta Corporation under management of the Marshall Space Flight Center.NASA “We didn’t have cellphones or telecon capabilities yet,” Odom recalled. “I probably spent more time with the pilot of the twin-engine plane in those days than I did with my wife.”
Marshall’s shuttle propulsion leadership led to the successful STS-1 mission in 1981, launching an era of orbital science exemplified by NASA’s Spacelab program.
“Spacelab demonstrated that NASA could continue to achieve things no one had ever done before,” said Craft, who served as mission manager for Spacelab 1 in 1983 – a highlight of his 40-year NASA career. “That combination of science, engineering, and global partnership helped shape our goals in space ever since.”
Engineers in the X-ray Calibration Facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, work to integrate elements of the Chandra X-ray Observatory in this March 1997 photo. Chandra was lifted to orbit by space shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, the culmination of two decades of telescope optics, mirror, and spacecraft development and testing at Marshall. In the quarter century since, Chandra has delivered nearly 25,000 detailed observations of neutron stars, supernova remnants, black holes, and other high-energy objects, some as far as 13 billion light-years distant. Marshall continues to manage the program for NASA. NASA Bookended by the successful Hubble and Chandra launches, the 1990s also saw Marshall deliver the first U.S. module for the International Space Station, signaling a transformative new era of human spaceflight.
Odom, who retired in 1989 as associate administrator for the space station at NASA Headquarters, reflects on his three-decade agency career with pride.
“It was a great experience, start to finish, working with the teams in Huntsville and New Orleans and our partners nationwide and around the globe, meeting each new challenge, solving the practical, day-to-day engineering and technology problems we only studied about in college,” he said.
Shrouded for transport, a 45-foot segment of the International Space Station’s “backbone” truss rolls out of test facilities at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in July 2000, ready to be flown to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch. Marshall played a key role in the development, testing, and delivery of the truss and other critical space station modules and structural elements, as well as the station’s air and water recycling systems and science payload hardware. Marshall’s Payload Operations Integration Center also continues to lead round-the-clock space station science. NASA That focus on human spaceflight solutions continued into the 21st century. Marshall delivered additional space station elements and science hardware, refined its air and water recycling systems, and led round-the-clock science from the Payload Operations Integration Center. Marshall scientists also managed the Gravity Probe Band Hinode missions and launched NASA’s SERVIR geospatial observation system. Once primary space stationconstruction – and the 40-year shuttle program – concluded in the 2010s, Marshall took on oversight of NASA’s Space Launch System, led James Webb Space Telescope mirror testing, and delivered the orbiting Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer.
As the 2020s continue, Marshall meets each new challenge with enthusiasm and expertise, preparing for the highly anticipated Artemis II crewed launch and a host of new science and discovery missions – and buoyed by strong industry partners and by the Huntsville community, which takes pride in being home to “Rocket City USA.”
“Humanity is on an upward, outward trajectory,” Pelfrey said. “And day after day, year after year, Marshall is setting the course to explore beyond tomorrow’s horizon.”
Read more about Marshall and its 65-year history:
https://www.nasa.gov/marshall
Hannah Maginot
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
hannah.l.maginot@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Feb 24, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Project F.I.R.E. team, part of Falcon Research Labs and current students at Cerritos Community College in California, is researching the use of drones to extinguish fires as part of a NASA research award called the University Student Research Challenge. From left, Logan Stahl, Juan Villa, Angel Ortega, Larisa Mayoral, Jenny Escobar, and Paola Mayoral-Jimenez.Falcon Research Labs Great ideas, and the talent and passion that bring them to life, can be found anywhere.
In that spirit, NASA’s University Student Research Challenge (USRC) in 2024 selected its first group of community college students to contribute original research to the agency’s transformative vision for 21st century aviation.
The student-led group, from Cerritos Community College in California, is researching a new method of safely extinguishing wildfires using eco-friendly pellets dropped from uncrewed drones they call Project F.I.R.E. (Fire Intervention Retardant Expeller).
“Wildfires are a major problem we’re facing today,” said Angel Ortega, project technical director and lead research engineer for Project F.I.R.E. at Cerritos Community College. “The goal of our research is to demonstrate that our prototype drone with biodegradable fire retardant can successfully put out a controlled fire.”
A Community College First
Until now, USRC has only selected participants from traditional four-year institutions, compared to a two-year community college. This award exemplifies the activity’s goal of giving all of tomorrow’s aeronautical innovators a shot at NASA support for their research ideas.
“The University Innovation (UI) project provides a number of different avenues for students to contribute to aeronautics,” said Steven Holz, who manages the USRC award process. “All of the opportunities are different and help build knowledge and skills that would be advantageous to those wanting to continue working on UI opportunities or within NASA.”
This award is one of two from NASA’s USRC selected in 2024. The team received the USRC award prior to the devastating Los Angeles fires of January 2025.
“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy,” members of the team said in a statement. “As a team, we are deeply committed to advancing innovative solutions to enhance safety and resilience, working toward a future where communities are better protected against such disasters.”
Innovating a Solution
The six team members of Project F.I.R.E. are driven by an ethic of public service. As fires continue to affect communities in their native southern California, they are applying their skills to finding a way to help.
“We want to get the public inspired that there are possible solutions at hand,” Ortega said. “And the work we’re doing now can hopefully build towards that bigger goal of a widespread solution.”
The research they are pursuing involves dropping biodegradable pellets into fires from uncrewed, autonomous drones. The pellets, upon reaching the ground, combine chemical ingredients which create a foamlike solution of fire retardant that will not contaminate the environment after the fire is extinguished.
Project F.I.R.E.’s innovative idea for fire suppression involves releasing eco-friendly foam pellets from uncrewed drones.Falcon Research Labs The team is keen to support firefighters and wildland fire managers and keep them safe while managing these natural disasters. The group has met with firefighters, discussed the idea with them, and received useful feedback on how to make the technology work best in the field.
Though the group is only at the outset of the research, their idea has existed for longer.
Blue Skies Forever
Prior to applying for a USRC, Project F.I.R.E. also presented at NASA’s 2024 Gateway to Blue Skies competition, in which they won the “Future Game-Changer” award.
Through Gateway to Blue Skies, NASA challenges college students to research climate-friendly technologies and applications related to the future of aviation and present them at an annual forum.
Following Project F.I.R.E.’s participation in the forum, they applied for a USRC grant to begin turning their vision into reality.
“Our experience with NASA has been incredibly supportive and inspiring,” said Logan Stahl, the project’s operations director. “We thought competing against some of the other schools would be intimidating, but the experience we’ve had is the complete opposite. Everyone was very welcoming, and the NASA representatives communicated with us and asked questions.”
The USRC support will allow the team to build on their earlier foundations, they said.
“Because Gateway to Blue Skies is more conceptual, it let us bring our idea to the table. Now through USRC, we can start building hands-on and make our idea come to life,” said Larisa Mayoral, chemical engineer and laboratory operations manager.
The Project F.I.R.E. team receives their “Future Game-Changer” award during the 2024 Gateway to Blue Skies forum held at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.NASA / Brandon Torres The team expressed gratitude, speaking as community college students, for their ability to participate in and contribute research at a level that competes with top-brass universities.
“We’re very appreciative of our college and NASA providing us this opportunity,” said Paola Mayoral Jimenez, laboratory coordinator and safety manager. “By doing this project, we hope to shine a light on community colleges, their students, and what they have to offer.”
Complete details on USRC awardees and solicitations, such as what to include in a proposal and how to submit it, are available on the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate solicitation page.
About the Author
John Gould
Aeronautics Research Mission DirectorateJohn Gould is a member of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications team at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. He is dedicated to public service and NASA’s leading role in scientific exploration. Prior to working for NASA Aeronautics, he was a spaceflight historian and writer, having a lifelong passion for space and aviation.
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Last Updated Feb 23, 2025 EditorJim BankeContactAngela Surgenorangela.d.surgenor@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
6 Min Read NASA’s PUNCH Mission to Revolutionize Our View of Solar Wind
Earth is immersed in material streaming from the Sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure.
NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission will be the first to image the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and solar wind together to better understand the Sun, solar wind, and Earth as a single connected system.
Launching no earlier than Feb. 28, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, PUNCH will provide scientists with new information about how potentially disruptive solar events form and evolve. This could lead to more accurate predictions about the arrival of space weather events at Earth and impact on humanity’s robotic explorers in space.
“What we hope PUNCH will bring to humanity is the ability to really see, for the first time, where we live inside the solar wind itself,” said Craig DeForest, principal investigator for PUNCH at Southwest Research Institute’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado.
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14773.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Seeing Solar Wind in 3D
The PUNCH mission’s four suitcase-sized satellites have overlapping fields of view that combine to cover a larger swath of sky than any previous mission focused on the corona and solar wind. The satellites will spread out in low Earth orbit to construct a global view of the solar corona and its transition to the solar wind. They will also track solar storms like coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Their Sun-synchronous orbit will enable them to see the Sun 24/7, with their view only occasionally blocked by Earth.
Typical camera images are two dimensional, compressing the 3D subject into a flat plane and losing information. But PUNCH takes advantage of a property of light called polarization to reconstruct its images in 3D. As the Sun’s light bounces off material in the corona and solar wind, it becomes polarized — meaning the light waves oscillate in a particular way that can be filtered, much like how polarized sunglasses filter out glare off of water or metal. Each PUNCH spacecraft is equipped with a polarimeter that uses three distinct polarizing filters to capture information about the direction that material is moving that would be lost in typical images.
“This new perspective will allow scientists to discern the exact trajectory and speed of coronal mass ejections as they move through the inner solar system,” said DeForest. “This improves on current instruments in two ways: with three-dimensional imaging that lets us locate and track CMEs which are coming directly toward us; and with a broad field of view, which lets us track those CMEs all the way from the Sun to Earth.”
All four spacecraft are synchronized to serve as a single “virtual instrument” that spans the whole PUNCH constellation.
Crews conduct additional solar array deployment testing for NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites at Astrotech Space Operations located on Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. USSF 30th Space Wing/Alex Valdez The PUNCH satellites include one Narrow Field Imager and three Wide Field Imagers. The Narrow Field Imager (NFI) is a coronagraph, which blocks out the bright light from the Sun to better see details in the Sun’s corona, recreating what viewers on Earth see during a total solar eclipse when the Moon blocks the face of the Sun — a narrower view that sees the solar wind closer to the Sun. The Wide Field Imagers (WFI) are heliospheric imagers that view the very faint, outermost portion of the solar corona and the solar wind itself — giving a wide view of the solar wind as it spreads out into the solar system.
“I’m most excited to see the ‘inbetweeny’ activity in the solar wind,” said Nicholeen Viall, PUNCH mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This means not just the biggest structures, like CMEs, or the smallest interactions, but all the different types of solar wind structures that fill that in between area.”
When these solar wind structures from the Sun reach Earth’s magnetic field, they can drive dynamics that affect Earth’s radiation belts. To launch spacecraft through these belts, including ones that will carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond, scientists need to understand the solar wind structure and changes in this region.
Building Off Other Missions
“The PUNCH mission is built on the shoulders of giants,” said Madhulika Guhathakurta, PUNCH program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “For decades, heliophysics missions have provided us with glimpses of the Sun’s corona and the solar wind, each offering critical yet partial views of our dynamic star’s influence on the solar system.”
When scientists combine data from PUNCH and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which flies through the Sun’s corona, they will see both the big picture and the up-close details. Working together, Parker Solar Probe and PUNCH span a field of view from a little more than half a mile (1 kilometer) to over 160 million miles (about 260 million kilometers).
Additionally, the PUNCH team will combine their data with diverse observations from other missions, like NASA’s CODEX (Coronal Diagnostic Experiment) technology demonstration, which views the corona even closer to the surface of the Sun from its vantage point on the International Space Station. PUNCH’s data also complements observations from NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) — targeted for launch in March 2025 — which investigates the magnetic field perturbations associated with Earth’s high-altitude auroras that PUNCH will also spot in its wide-field view.
A conceptual animation showing the heliosphere, the vast bubble that is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field and envelops all the planets.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab As the solar wind that PUNCH will observe travels away from the Sun and Earth, it will then be studied by the IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) mission, which is targeting a launch in 2025.
“The PUNCH mission will bridge these perspectives, providing an unprecedented continuous view that connects the birthplace of the solar wind in the corona to its evolution across interplanetary space,” said Guhathakurta.
The PUNCH mission is scheduled to conduct science for at least two years, following a 90-day commissioning period after launch. The mission is launching as a rideshare with the agency’s next astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer).
“PUNCH is the latest heliophysics addition to the NASA fleet that delivers groundbreaking science every second of every day,” said Joe Westlake, heliophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Launching this mission as a rideshare bolsters its value to the nation by optimizing every pound of launch capacity to maximize the scientific return for the cost of a single launch.”
The PUNCH mission is led by Southwest Research Institute’s offices in San Antonio, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA Goddard for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Header Image:
An artist’s concept showing the four PUNCH satellites orbiting Earth.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
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Last Updated Feb 21, 2025 Related Terms
Heliophysics Coronal Mass Ejections Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) Science Mission Directorate Solar Wind Space Weather The Sun Explore More
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By NASA
Before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the Moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the Moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their landing craft, a few believed a deep layer of dust covered it that would swallow any visitors. Until 1964, no closeup photographs of the lunar surface existed, only those obtained by Earth-based telescopes.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed the Ranger program, a series of spacecraft designed to return closeup images before impacting on the Moon’s surface. Ranger 7 first accomplished that goal in July 1964. On Feb. 17, 1965, its successor Ranger 8 launched toward the Moon, and three days later returned images of the Moon. The mission’s success helped the country meet President John F. Kennedy’s goal of a human Moon landing before the end of the decade.
Schematic diagram of the Ranger 8 spacecraft, showing its major components. NASA/JPL The television system aboard Ranger 8 showing its six cameras.NASA/JPL. Launch of Ranger 8. NASA. Ranger 8 lifted off from Cape Kennedy, now Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Feb. 17, 1965. The Atlas-Agena rocket first placed the spacecraft into Earth orbit before sending it on a lunar trajectory. The next day, the spacecraft carried out a mid-course correction, and on Feb. 20, Ranger 8 reached the Moon. The spacecraft’s six cameras turned on as planned, about eight minutes earlier than its predecessor to obtain images comparable in resolution to ground-based photographs for calibration purposes. Ranger 8 took its first photograph at an altitude of 1,560 miles, and during its final 23 minutes of flight, the spacecraft sent back 7,137 images of the lunar surface. The last image, taken at an altitude of 1,600 feet and 0.28 seconds before Ranger 8 impacted at 1.67 miles per second, had a resolution of about five feet. The spacecraft impacted 16 miles from its intended target in the Sea of Tranquility, ending a flight of 248,900 miles. Scientists had an interest in this area of the Moon as a possible landing zone for a future human landing, and indeed Apollo 11 landed 44 miles southeast of the Ranger 8 impact site in July 1969.
Ranger 8’s first image from an altitude of 1,560 miles.NASA/JPL. Ranger 8 image from an altitude of 198 miles, showing craters Ritter and Sabine.NASA/JPL. Ranger 8’s final images, taken at an altitude as low as 1,600 feet. NASA/JPL. One more Ranger mission followed, Ranger 9, in March 1965. Television networks broadcast Ranger 9’s images of the Alphonsus crater and the surrounding area “live” as the spacecraft approached its impact site in the crater – letting millions of Americans see the Moon up-close as it happened. Based on the photographs returned by the last three Rangers, scientists felt confident to move on to the next phase of robotic lunar exploration, the Surveyor series of soft landers. The Ranger photographs provided confidence that the lunar surface could support a soft-landing and that the Sea of Tranquility presented a good site for the first human landing. A little more than four years after the final Ranger images, Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon.
Impact sites of Rangers 7, 8, and 9. NASA/JPL. The Ranger 8 impact crater, marked by the blue circle, photographed by Lunar Orbiter 2 in 1966.NASA/JPL. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of the Ranger 8 impact crater, taken in 2012 at a low sun angle.NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University. The impacts of the Ranger probes left visible craters on the lunar surface, later photographed by orbiting spacecraft. Lunar Orbiter 2 and Apollo 16 both imaged the Ranger 8 impact site at relatively low resolution in 1966 and 1972, respectively. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged the crash site in greater detail in 2012.
Watch a brief video about the Ranger 8 impact on the Moon.
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By NASA
With two months to go before flight, the Apollo 13 prime crew of James Lovell, Thomas Mattingly, Fred Haise, and backups John Young, John Swigert, and Charles Duke continued to train for the 10-day mission planned to land in the Fra Mauro highlands region of the Moon. Engineers continued to prepare the Saturn V rocket and spacecraft at the launch pad for the April 11, 1970, liftoff and completed the Flight Readiness Test of the vehicle. All six astronauts spent many hours in flight simulators training while the Moon walkers practiced landing the Lunar Module and rehearsed their planned Moon walks. The crew for the next Moon landing mission, Apollo 14, participated in a geology field trip as part of their training for the flight then planned for October 1970. Meanwhile, NASA released Apollo 12 lunar samples to scientists and the Apollo 12 crew set off on a Presidential world goodwill tour.
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers completed the Flight Readiness Test of the Apollo 13 Saturn V on Feb. 26. The test ensured that all systems are flight ready and compatible with ground support equipment, and the astronauts simulated portions of the countdown and powered flight. Successful completion of the readiness test cleared the way for a countdown dress rehearsal at the end of March.
John Young prepares for a flight aboard the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle.NASA John Young after a training flight aboard the landing trainer. NASA Fred Haise prepares for a flight at the Lunar Landing Research Facility. NASA One of the greatest challenges astronauts faced during a lunar mission entailed completing a safe landing on the lunar surface. In addition to time spent in simulators, Apollo mission commanders and their backups trained for the final few hundred feet of the descent using the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle at Ellington Air Force Base near the Manned Spacecraft Center, now NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Houston. Bell Aerosystems of Buffalo, New York, built the trainer for NASA to simulate the flying characteristics of the Lunar Module. Lovell and Young completed several flights in February 1970. Due to scheduling constraints with the trainer, lunar module pilots trained for their role in the landing using the Lunar Landing Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Haise and Duke completed training sessions at the Langley facility in February.
Charles Duke practices Lunar Module egress during a KC-135 parabolic flight. NASA Charles Duke rehearses unstowing equipment from the Lunar Module during a KC-135 parabolic flight. NASA The astronauts trained for moonwalks with parabolic flights aboard NASA’s KC-135 aircraft that simulated the low lunar gravity, practicing their ladder descent to the surface. On the ground, they rehearsed the moonwalks, setting up the American flag and the large S-band communications antenna, and collecting lunar samples. Engineers improved their spacesuits to make the expected longer spacewalks more comfortable for the crew members by installing eight-ounce bags of water inside the helmets for hydration.
James Lovell, left, and Fred Haise practice setting up science equipment, the American flag, and the S-band antenna.NASA Lovell, left, and Haise practice collecting rock samples. NASA John Young, left, and Charles Duke train to collect rock samples. NASA Fred Haise, left, and James Lovell practice lowering the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package from the Lunar Module.NASA Lovell, left, and Haise practice setting up the experiments. NASA Lovell, left, and Haise practice drilling for the Heat Flow Experiment. NASA During their 35 hours on the Moon’s surface, Lovell and Haise planned to conduct two four-hour spacewalks to set up the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP), a suite of four investigations designed to collect data about the lunar environment after the astronauts’ departure, and to conduct geologic explorations of the landing site. The four experiments included the:
Charged Particle Lunar Environment Experiment designed to measure the flexes of charged particles Cold Cathode Gauge Experiment designed to measure the pressure of the lunar atmosphere Heat Flow Experiment designed to make thermal measurements of the lunar subsurface Passive Seismic Experiment designed to measure any moonquakes, either naturally occurring or caused by artificial means As an additional investigation, the astronauts planned to deploy and retrieve the Solar Wind Composition experiment, a sheet of aluminum foil to collect particles from the solar wind for analysis by scientists back on Earth after about 20 hours of exposure on the lunar surface.
Apollo 14 astronauts Eugene Cernan, left, Joe Engle, Edgar Mitchell, and Alan Shepard with geologist Richard Jahns in the Pinacates Mountains of northern Mexico. NASA Shepard, left, Engle, Mitchell, and Cernan training with the Modular Equipment Transporter, accompanied by geologist Jahns. NASA With one lunar mission just two months away, NASA continued preparations for the following flight, Apollo 14, then scheduled for October 1970 with a landing targeted for the Littrow region of the Moon, an area scientists believed to be of volcanic origin. Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell and their backups Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Joe Engle learned spacecraft systems in the simulators. Accompanied by a team of geologists led by Richard Jahns, Shepard, Mitchell, Cernan, and Engle participated in a geology expedition to the Pinacate Mountain Range in northern Mexico Feb. 14-18, 1970. The astronauts practiced using the Modular Equipment Transporter, a two-wheeled conveyance to transport tools and samples on the lunar surface.
Mail out of the Apollo 12 lunar samples. Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad, left, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean ride in a motorcade in Lima, Peru.NASA On Feb. 13, 1970, NASA began releasing Apollo 12 lunar samples to 139 U.S. and 54 international scientists in 16 countries, a total of 28.6 pounds of material. On Feb. 16, Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean, accompanied by their wives and NASA and State Department officials, departed Houston’s Ellington Air Force Base for their 38-day Bullseye Presidential Goodwill World Tour. They first traveled to Latin America, making stops in Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and Panama before continuing on to Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The groundbreaking science and discoveries made during Apollo missions has pushed NASA to explore the Moon more than ever before through the Artemis program. Apollo astronauts set up mirror arrays, or “retroreflectors,” on the Moon to accurately reflect laser light beamed at them from Earth with minimal scattering or diffusion. Retroreflectors are mirrors that reflect the incoming light back in the same incoming direction. Calculating the time required for the beams to bounce back allowed scientists to precisely measure the Moon’s shape and distance from Earth, both of which are directly affected by Earth’s gravitational pull. More than 50 years later, on the cusp of NASA’s crewed Artemis missions to the Moon, lunar research still leverages data from those Apollo-era retroreflectors.
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