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Apollo 8 launched on December 21, 1968, and was the second crewed spaceflight mission flown in the United States Apollo space program (the first, Apollo 7, stayed in Earth orbit). Apollo 8 was the third flight and the first crewed launch of the Saturn V rocket.
This was achieved following the installation of a retroreflector array on July 21, 1969 by the crew of Apollo 11. Two more retroreflector arrays were left by the Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 missions. Successful lunar laser range measurements to the retroreflectors were first reported on Aug. 1, 1969 by the 3.1 m telescope at Lick Observatory. [9]
For the Apollo lunar missions, TLI was performed by the restartable J-2 engine in the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V rocket. This particular TLI burn lasted approximately 350 seconds, providing 3.05 to 3.25 km/s (10,000 to 10,600 ft/s) of change in velocity , at which point the spacecraft was traveling at approximately 10.4 km/s (34150 ft/s ...
The principles of flight dynamics are used to model a vehicle's powered flight during launch from the Earth; a spacecraft's orbital flight; maneuvers to change orbit; translunar and interplanetary flight; launch from and landing on a celestial body, with or without an atmosphere; entry through the atmosphere of the Earth or other celestial body ...
Frank Borman, the commander of NASA’s Apollo 8 voyage into space that orbited humans around the moon for the first time, has died aged 95.. Borman passed away on Tuesday in Billings, Montana ...
The first crewed Apollo missions occurred in 1968. It was also the year in which Earth lifeforms first left low Earth orbit, during the successful Zond 5 mission to the Moon and the Zond 6 lunar mission which crashed upon return, and the year that humans first left low Earth orbit, during the successful Apollo 8 mission to the Moon.
A free-return trajectory may be the initial trajectory to allow a safe return in the event of a systems failure; this was applied in the Apollo 8, Apollo 10, and Apollo 11 lunar missions. In such a case a free return to a suitable reentry situation is more useful than returning to near the Earth, but then needing propulsion anyway to prevent ...
The Apollo 15 subsatellite PFS-1 and the Apollo 16 subsatellite PFS-2, both small satellites released from the Apollo Service Module, contributed to this discovery. PFS-1 ended up in a long-lasting orbit, at 28° inclination, and successfully completed its mission after one and a half years. PFS-2 was placed in a particularly unstable orbital ...