Welcome to my image gallery related to the manned-space program and, more specifically, the Apollo series which both
captivated the world's attention in the late 1960's and perhaps put NASA on a pedestal most-well deserved. Both NASA
and the Apollo series were certainly instrumental in lighting a lifelong interest in astronomy for myself and NASA will
always hold a special place in my heart!
The Apollo series (1963-1972) comprised of a wide-variety of missions starting with the Apollo 1 (1967) catastrophe during
a prelaunch fire, three test firings and unmanned missions (Apollo 4-6, 1967-68), two earth-orbitting (Apollo 7 and 9,
1968-1969) and two lunar-orbitting (Apollo 8 and 10, also 1968-1969) missions designed to test key hardware, a failed
and nearly catastrophic mission (Apollo 13, 1970) which included a lunar flyby by necessity and, of course, the six
manned landing missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 1969-1972) which included the retrieval of approximately 400
kg of lunar sample material by the twelve astronauts ever to set foot on the moon and whose cumulative EVA time exceeded
100 hours and ranged as far as 35 km from their landing site. For more intriguing details regarding each of these missions,
click here and/or
here.
Note: Although not widely known, three additional missions (Apollo 18-20) were cancelled due to
budgetary constraints. The proposed landing sites for these missions were Copernicus (Apollo 18), Hadley (Apollo 19) and
Tycho (Apollo 20). Following the failure of the Apollo 13 mission, the original list of landing sites was reshuffled and,
for example, Apollo 14's landing site was changed from Littrow to Apollo 13's landing site of Fra Mauro. For additional
details, click here.
Click on any image for a larger rendition with imaging details.