NASA had a famous quality control process: National Research Council (1996), “Case study: NASA space shuttle flight control software,” in Statistical Software Engineering, National Academies Press

The landing sites that were planned for the lost Apollo missions are still waiting for the footsteps of human beings, //

However, three more missions to the moon - Apollos 18, 19 and 20 - could have been flown, but instead were canceled. All of the hardware for these missions had already been built, and trained astronauts were ready to fly. The savings of those cancellations amounted to only a few tens of millions of dollars.

An article in Seeker suggests that what was lost by this must be one of the most outrageous, bureaucratic decisions in space history.

"If the Apollo 18-20 flights were realized, school kids today could be looking at stunning photographs taken from the mountain-rimmed floors of the young impact craters Copernicus or Tycho, or the terrain on the far side of the moon, or the frozen volcanic lava flows from billions of years ago."

success of the Apollo missions to the moon would have inspired the United States to mount more voyages of discovery, not to be so anxious to bring the program to a close that it would cancel missions for which hardware had already been built.

However, the stress of the Vietnam War, racial tensions, and the efforts of some unscrupulous politicians to paint the space program as a drain of money that would better be spent on social programs contributed to Apollo's early close.

William Gerstenmaier is no longer leading the way //

The head of NASA’s human exploration program has been replaced within the agency, just months after Vice President Mike Pence challenged NASA to send humans to the Moon within the next five years. The move is the latest in a couple of high-profile executive changes NASA has made in recent months as the agency strives to return humans to the lunar surface. //

Another high profile NASA employee, Bill Hill, has also been reassigned — from deputy associate administrator of human exploration to another special advisor position. Effectively, NASA’s first and second in command of humans in space have been replaced at the same time.

In the first of BBC Future’s stories recounting the Apollo program in 50 numbers, we look at the people who helped make the Moon missions reality.

Neil Armstrong was one of Nasa’s most accomplished pilots. As he descended towards the lunar surface on 20 July 1969, the success or failure of the first Moon landing depended on the skills, reactions and expertise of this one man. With a boulder field ahead of him, alarms sounding and fuel running low, he guided the spacecraft to the ground.

But in the few talks and interviews Armstrong gave about the landing, he was always modest about the achievement. He pointed instead to the thousands of people who had made the mission possible.

At its height, Nasa estimates that a total of 400,000 men and women across the United States were involved in the Apollo programme. The number includes everyone from astronauts to mission controllers, contractors to caterers, engineers, scientists, nurses, doctors, mathematicians and programmers.

To see how Nasa arrived at that figure, consider a single aspect of Apollo 11 – the lunar landing itself. Armstrong’s right hand man was Buzz Aldrin. On the ground, there was a room full of mission controllers. Behind this core team of 20-30 (per shift) were hundreds of engineers in Houston and a team at MIT in Boston advising on the computer alarms.

Mission Control was supported by communications ground stations around the world, the engineering team at the Grumman Corporation that built the lander, and all their subcontractors. Add in support staff – from senior managers to the people selling the coffee – and already there are thousands involved. Multiply that by all the different components of the endeavour – from rockets to spacesuits, communications to fuel, design to training, launch to splashdown…and 400,000 seems an almost modest figure.

Teasel Muir-Harmony, Apollo Spacecraft Curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. “Each of the [Apollo 11] crew members was born in 1930, they all have military experience, they're all pilots and I believe they're all Christian – so they fit a very narrow set of criteria that was required at the time to be an astronaut.”

At 38, Armstrong was the joint youngest Apollo commander (with Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan). Charlie Duke, the 36-year-old Apollo 16 lunar lander pilot, was the youngest Moonwalker. The oldest man to walk on the Moon was America’s first astronaut, Alan Shepard. By the time of his Apollo 14 mission in 1971, he was 47.

The record for the oldest man in space is held by the same astronaut who was the first American to orbit the Earth. John Glenn was 77 when he took part in a nine-day mission on space shuttle Discovery in 1998.

Thirty three men flew 11 Apollo missions. Of these, 27 men reached the Moon, 24 orbited the Moon – but only 12 walked on the surface. They represented “mankind” and had the challenge of conveying the experience to a global audience.

No-one knew what Neil Armstrong was going to say when he stepped down onto the lunar surface. He’d not discussed it with anyone, although his words: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” could not have been more poetic or appropriate if they had been conceived by a committee of speech writers.

But what do you say when you’re the second man on the Moon? Buzz Aldrin summed-up the view of the barren lunar landscape perfectly in just two words: “magnificent desolation.”
All eight astronauts – along with six Soviet cosmonauts – are commemorated with a plaque left on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15.

Looking at the coverage of Apollo, you might be forgiven for thinking it was a solely (white) male endeavour. The astronauts were all men, the mission controllers were all men, even the TV anchors were male. The only women seen on TV were the astronauts’ wives.

However, as we now know, there were thousands of women behind the scenes supporting Apollo and essential to its success. There were secretaries and nurses, mathematicians and programmers; women sewed together the spacesuits and wound the wires for the Apollo guidance computers.

Even so, the space programme wasn’t geared-up for women.

“Even when they built new buildings they forgot there were going to be more and more women as workers,” says Morgan. “The first building I worked in only had one ladies room in the whole three-storey building - they had to convert a men's room on each floor to a ladies’ room…so we had ladies’ rooms with urinals.”

“This will be a unique rocket,” says SLS systems engineer, Dawn Stanley. “It’s going to get us back to the Moon and beyond the Moon to asteroids and Mars, further than we’ve ever gone before.”

Stanley is based at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, behind the high security fences of the Redstone Arsenal – for more than 60 years the home of America’s missile and rocket programme. The 154 sq kilometre (60 sq mile) site is dotted with firing ranges, test stands and discarded space hardware.

Conscious of all this history around her, Stanley says the new spacecraft is designed to be more versatile than anything that has gone before.

“If they want us to go to an asteroid to do a retrieval mission, this rocket can get you there or if you want to go to Mars, this rocket can get there,” she says. “The SLS can meet those many missions that our government has.”

The first four SLS launchers will use spare engines left over from the Space Shuttle programme, the solid rocket boosters are longer versions of the ones used on Shuttle; and the upper stage engine is based on a 1960s Saturn 5 design. Stanley makes no apologies for this rocketry recycling.

“To get off the Earth, we still need a rocket so we’re using Shuttle technology and technology from Apollo but we’re also infusing new technology,” she says. “Our core stage is a new design and we’re using new manufacturing techniques to get an efficient and affordable rocket built.”

The SLS itself is taking shape some six hours drive south of Huntsville in Nasa’s vast Michoud assembly facility near New Orleans. Almost a kilometre long, this factory was used to build the Saturn V rocket and, until, recently the Shuttle’s external fuel tank.

Because of its size most of the workers get around the rocket factory on bicycles or, if they are really lucky, white Austin Powers-style electric buggies – complete with Nasa emblems on the side.

We drive past the first barrels, rings and domes of the new rocket, arranged across the factory floor like some sort of modernistic Stonehenge. Each one is made from sheets of aluminium, only a few millimetres thick in places but given structural integrity by an internal lattice of thicker metal. These gleaming structures will soon be welded together to form the central core of the rocket. This will be filled with fuel tanks, engines and control systems.

“Welding typically uses lots of heat, fire and smoke,” explains SLS engineer Brent Gaddes. “Friction stir welding is totally different because you never completely melt the metal – you actually stir it together. The metal never gets above the melting point.”

It’s a remarkable process to watch – two panels are clamped together and a computer-controlled rotating spindle moves along the join. It takes only a few minutes for even the longest welds, which are stronger and more reliable than anything produced using conventional welding techniques.

When Nasa’s giant SLS rocket carries out its first mission, it will be brought to the launchpad by one of the largest vehicles ever built. And driving it requires massive concentration.

Within the next two years, Nasa plans to blast the first of its Space Launch System (SLS) rockets on a 384,400 km (238,855 mile) uncrewed voyage around the Moon. With plans for lunar space stations, Moon bases and Mars missions, the future of America’s state-funded astronaut programme depends on its success.

Although the SLS is brand new, the multi-billion-dollar 98m-tall (322 ft) launcher will begin its journey at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a vehicle that is more than 50 years old. And, for the team charged with conveying the rocket the seven kilometres (4.3 miles) to the launchpad, the pressure is on.

The four-tracked crawlers were built in 1965 to carry the Saturn 5 rocket that took astronauts to the Moon. They were adapted in the 70s for the Space Shuttle. Now, one of these has been refurbished and strengthened to convey the SLS. Despite some modernisation, the fundamental design of the 40-metre-long (131 feet), 35 metre-wide (114 feet), 2,700 tonne (six million pound) giant tracked vehicle remains the same.

“We brag sometimes that the crawlers were made with a slide rule and not a computer,” says Myers, who has been driving the crawler-transporters for more than 35 years. “They were built better – overbuilt – than many vehicles today and as a result they’re very reliable.”

That a machine so vast can move at less than a mile an hour (1.6km/h) is one of the greatest achievements of the original engineers. “It’s not about how fast it can go – it’s about how slow it can go,” says Myers. “It has the capability for positioning and docking its platform on the launch pad to within half an inch and on command it can move an eighth of an inch.”

With 50 years and some 3,000 km (2,000 miles) on the clock, Nasa expects the crawlers to be in operation for at least another three decades. With the latest refurbishment complete, testing is well underway for the first SLS mission. And, just to be certain they’ve got their calculations right, before the strengthened crawler is used to carry the new rocket, it will be tried out with an equivalent weight in concrete beams.

One of the most widely known photographs of Earth, this image was taken by the crew of the final Apollo mission as the crew made its way to the Moon. Dubbed the “Blue Marble,” Earth is revealed as both a vast planet home to billions of creatures and a beautiful orb capable of fitting into the pocket of the universe.

Some astronauts didn’t want to bring TV cameras on board – but the footage captured has gone down as some of the most memorable in human history.

Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders – were about to get their first glimpse of the far side of the Moon.

“We fired the spacecraft engine something like four minutes to slow down enough to get into lunar orbit,” says Borman. “We’re about halfway through when we looked down and there was the Moon.”

“The lunar surface was terribly distressed with meteorites, holes, craters, volcanic residue,” he says. “But one of the things that struck me was there's absolutely no colour, it was either grey or black or white.”

“It was a very interesting first view
But the most captivating view came as they swung back around on the fourth orbit and Anders spotted the Earth in the command module window.

“Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!” he exclaimed. “You got a colour film, Jim? Hand me a roll of colour, quick, would you?”

These cartridges containing reels of 70mm film could be easily swapped on the crew’s Hasselblad cameras.

“Take several, take several of them,” said Lovell. “Here, give it to me!”

Once the film was developed back on Earth several weeks later, Nasa image 2383 (and the frames either side) would become one of the most famous pictures of all time.

The picture, showing the Earth in the context of the barren Moon, was one of the unexpected achievements of the Apollo programme.
“I think it's probably one of the more significant pictures that humans have ever taken,” agrees Borman. “The Earth was the only thing in the entire universe that had any colour – a beautiful sight, we're very fortunate to live on this planet.”

In the run-up to the Apollo missions, there was tremendous resistance among many Nasa engineers and astronauts to the idea of carrying TV cameras for live broadcasts from space. It was frivolous and would interfere with the mission, they argued.

The formidable head of mission control, Chris Kraft, thought otherwise and insisted that TV was a way of showing American taxpayers how their money was being spent.

The first astronauts to carry a TV camera into orbit were the crew of Apollo 7 – Wally Schirra, Don Eisele and Walt Cunningham. After a shaky start, they soon got the hang of adding a little showbiz to the space programme.

Despite their shortcomings, these first TV broadcasts from space – a total of seven – nonetheless won an enthusiastic global following. They gave the missions an immediacy that wasn’t possible with film or photography.

When the Apollo 7 crew returned to Earth, they were rewarded with an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for their efforts.

Later missions would push the boundaries of TV technology, with improved cameras, transmitters and content. Apollo 8 broadcast live from lunar orbit for the first time and, during Apollo 10, the crew produced the first colour TV shows from the Moon.

Broadcasting from the relatively bright and controlled conditions of the Apollo spacecraft was very different from transmitting the first images from the surface of another world. But Nasa realised it was essential to broadcast mankind’s first footsteps on the Moon.

Nasa wasn’t taking any risks with ensuring the live video reached the Earth and arranged for the transmissions to be received by 64-metre wide dishes in Goldstone, California and at Parkes in New South Wales, Australia.

Engineers at Parkes spent months working with Nasa to prepare the giant radio telescope to receive the first TV pictures from the lunar surface. On the 21 July 1969, everything was ready for the big event but then the weather suddenly changed.

“Just minutes before the Moonwalk was due to begin, a violent squall hit the telescope with winds that were over the safe operating speeds,” says Parkes operations scientist John Sarkissian. “The astronauts may have been on the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon,” says Sarkissian, “but it was the ocean of storms here.”

During the later Apollo missions, a TV camera was fixed to the lunar rover to give viewers a drivers-eye view of the Moon. The camera was remote-controlled from Earth, which also enabled operators to capture one of the coolest shots in TV history. As Apollo 17 blasts-off from the Moon, the camera tilts to follow its trajectory

Around 600 million people watched as Neil Armstrong took his first tentative small step on the lunar surface. At that time, it was the world’s largest-ever TV audience.

But by the time of Apollo 13, just nine months later, the world had already lost interest. As Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise travelled to the Moon, none of the national US TV networks carried their broadcast.

28,000: Distance the Blue Marble image taken from, in miles

As the Apollo 17 crew headed to the Moon for the final time in 1972, they were instructed to take a picture looking back at the Earth. The image – known as the Blue Marble – gives a unique perspective of the whole Earth hanging in the blackness of space. Not only does it show the South Pole but it puts Africa – not the USA – at the centre.

Even when we return to the Moon, these first images – particularly those of Earth – will have a special place in the history of humankind.
In the words of Apollo 8 commander, Frank Borman: “I don't think any of us paid any attention to the fact that we would be going all the way to the Moon and be more interested in looking at the Earth.”

111: Height of Saturn V rocket in metresAt 36 storeys high, the Saturn V ranks as one of the greatest technical and engineering achievements of the 20th Century. Its development was led by Wernher von Braun who, even while building V2 rockets for Hitler, dreamed of building a rocket to carry men to the Moon. “Not only was he technically competent,” says Jay Honeycutt, a rocket engineer and later senior manager at Nasa, “but he had great leadership skills and a great ability to communicate with government officials who funded the projects.”

2: Maximum speed of the crawler transporters, in miles per hour

The Saturn Vs were put together in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), a structure so large it even has its own weather system. Engineers then had the challenge of getting the rockets to the launch pad, some five or so kilometres away. After an initial suggestion to float the spacecraft on barges, it was decided to build giant tracked vehicles called crawler-transporters.

With eight giant tracks – driven by 16 electric motors, powered by two generators – the crawler-transporters are more like ships than vehicles. And, like ships, the drivers are part of a team of operators and engineers that keep the vehicles moving slowly to the launch pad. Very slowly.
“The crawler has the power to go two miles an hour,” says driver Sam Dove. “However, you really don’t want to get it up to two, especially with a load on it – the most we ever go is one.”During Apollo, it could take up to 16 hours to deliver the spacecraft the few kilometres from the VAB to the launchpad. The time from pad to orbit was just eight minutes.

5: Saturn V upper stages on the Moon

Just nine minutes after launch, the Saturn V had already shed its first and second stages, sending them tumbling away towards the Atlantic Ocean. The third stage (rather confusingly known as the S4B), with its single engine, gave the spacecraft enough speed to reach orbit before shutting down.

Then, after one and a half revolutions of the Earth, the crew relit the S4B’s engine. In a manoeuvre known as Trans Lunar Injection, the rocket thrust the spacecraft out of orbit on a trajectory towards the Moon.

After the astronauts shut the engine down for a second time, and with the lunar lander extracted from the casing at the top, the rocket was abandoned. But – because it was travelling at the same speed and in the same direction as the spacecraft – unless the crew changed trajectory, the spent rocket would follow them to the Moon.

For the first few Apollo missions, Nasa’s solution was to send the S4B into orbit around the Sun. And, today, the S4B stages for Apollos 8, 9, 10 and 11 are still orbiting the Sun. Apollo 12’s upper stage, however, has been recaptured by the Earth’s gravity.
For the remaining missions, Nasa came up with a more imaginative plan.

The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (Alsep), left by the moonwalkers of Apollo 12 onwards, included a seismometer which relayed data to Earth. By smashing the S4B stages into the Moon, geologists could trace the resulting tremors through the lunar rock to help determine its geological composition.

As the missions progressed, and the more stages they crashed, the more data they got back. The Alseps continued to return data until 1977, when Nasa shut the programme down.

The Apollo programme pushed space and computing technology to its limit. Cutting edge at the time, some of the tech used seems alarmingly simple today.

74: Memory (ROM) of Apollo guidance computer, in kilobytes

Computer technology was one of the greatest – and long lasting – achievements of Apollo. From the solid-state microcomputer fitted to the lunar lander, to mighty IBM mainframes, with their flashing lights and banks of magnetic tape.

Although the 74 KB ROM and 4 KB RAM memory of the AGC sounds puny today – the equivalent of a 1980s home computer such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 – it was an impressive machine. Designed for the rigours of spaceflight, its software was hard-wired into coils and, crucially, it was set up so it couldn’t crash.

22: Diameter of Saturn V computer, in feet

If the Apollo Guidance Computer was impressive for its miniaturisation, then the computer controlling the Saturn V Moon rocket must rank as the largest ever launched.

Fitted within a ring above the top of the upper (third) stage of the rocket, the Saturn V instrument unit was massive. As well as digital and analogue computers, the unit contained all the electronics to control and monitor the rocket that would get men to the Moon.

Designed by Wernher von Braun’s rocketry team in Huntsville, Alabama, the computer was built by IBM. It was practically the equivalent of flying a mainframe computer into space and then abandoning it.

When Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during launch, knocking out power in the command module, mission controllers believe the circular design of the rocket’s computer saved it from the power surge.

The Apollo astronauts might have been in peak physical condition, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t suffer all sorts of health complaints. In space, no-one can hear your sneeze.24: Number of decongestant tablets taken by the Apollo 7 crew

Apollo 7 was commanded by one of Nasa’s most experienced astronauts, Wally Schirra - a veteran of both Mercury and Gemini missions. Alongside him in the capsule, rookie astronauts Don Eisele and Walt Cunningham. Commentators predicted this would be the crew to make the first attempt to land on the Moon.

Within hours of launch, however, Schirra came down with a cold.

Voyager 2 turned off a heater, the first in a series of choices NASA will have to make as the probe and its twin face ever-shrinking power supplies. //

Power is a scarce commodity on the pair of spacecraft because they run on nuclear-power sources that become less and less efficient over time. By now, each of the three generators on each probe is making only about 60% of the power they did when the Voyagers launched. Engineers on the mission have been grappling with the challenge for years already and knew it would only become more pressing as the spacecraft continue their journey. //

Despite the aging pains the geriatric duo are facing, nine instruments between the two spacecraft are still working out of the 20 that took flight. And NASA personnel on the mission are confident these most-distant explorers will continue to gather valuable observations about our solar system and its surroundings.

It's nearly 50 years since the US became the first country to land men on the Moon.

The Apollo 11 mission was a huge moment in US and world history, but what exactly happened and why does it matter?

Nasa has released new images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon, taken from an orbiting spacecraft.

They show scientific equipment, the lunar rovers and a trail of footprints left by astronauts 40 years ago.

Director Tom Jennings and engineer Poppy Northcutt reflect on seminal era in space flight

A set of original videotape recordings of the Apollo 11 Moon landing that were bought for $217.77 at a government surplus auction by a former NASA intern in the 1970s could raise up to $2 million when they are auctioned this month. //

Viewed only three times since they were bought directly from NASA at the auction in 1976, the tapes are the only surviving first-generation recordings of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon, according to Sotheby’s. In a statement, Sotheby’s explains that the tapes are “sharper and more distinct” than the few tapes that survive from network television broadcasts of the Moon landing.

The videotapes are from the collection of Gary George, who purchased them while serving an intern at NASA. In June 1976, George attended an auction at Houston’s Ellington Air Force Base where he bought a single lot of some 1,150 reels of magnetic tape whose “Owning Agency Or Reporting Office,” was listed as NASA.

“Among the reels were about sixty-five boxes of 2-inch, reel-to-reel videotapes of the type used by television stations,” explains Sotheby’s in a statement, noting that George planned to sell the used tapes, which could be re-recorded, to local TV stations.

However, after selling some of the tapes and donating others to Lamar University and a local church, George’s father noticed that three of the boxes were labeled: “APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1 [–3]” and “VR2000 525 Hi Band 15 ips.”

Thinking that these particular tapes may be worth hanging on to, George saved the three boxes, giving them little thought until early 2008 when he learned that NASA was attempting to locate its original slow scan videotapes of the Apollo 11 EVA (Extravehicular Activity) in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing,” explains Sotheby’s.

It took two years and cost $5 million—but the results are absolutely spectacular.

HOUSTON—Following the completion of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar restoration, NASA's historic Apollo Mission Operations Control Room 2 ("MOCR 2") is set to reopen to the public next week. The $5 million in funding for the restoration was partially provided by Space Center Houston, but the majority of the money was donated by the city of Webster, the Houston suburb where the Johnson Space Center is located. Another half-million in funding came from the general public via a Kickstarter campaign (disclosure: your humble author was a backer).For the past two years, historians and engineers from the Kansas Cosmosphere's Spaceworks team have been lovingly restoring and detailing the 1,200-pound (544kg) historic sage green Ford-Philco consoles that populated the control room—repairing damage from decades of casual neglect and also adding in the correct control panels so that each console now correctly mirrors how it would have been configured for an Apollo flight.

Ars was invited to view the restored MOCR 2 last week as the final finishing restoration touches were still being applied. We conducted some interviews and shot some photos while technicians and construction workers bustled around us, hammering and screwing the last bits and bobs into place. The room's lighting system was in the process of being worked on, and the room flickered several times between fully illuminated daytime lighting and dim twilight—providing an even more accurate glimpse of what it might have looked like during an actual mission.

Very recently, my 7 year old grandson was traveling with his parents through the east Texas town of Hemphill. In that place, where much of the debris of Columbia came to rest on February 1, 2003, the townspeople have built a very appropriate little memorial and museum for the Columbia crew. My grandson called me that evening and asked me to explain to him what happened to Columbia. That is a tough request coming from a serious questioner.

How does the Space Shuttle reduce speed during the re-entry process?
Does the Space Shuttle have flaps, spoilers and reverse thrust capabilities?
Can the Space Shuttle make a go-around?

The Lunar Ascent Engine was used during the Apollo missions to ascent from the lunar surface back to the Command and Service Module. There was one risky aspect of that engine: it was not possible to fire it repeatedly. Each ascent engine used on the Apollo missions was fired for the first time on the Moon. //

Why was the engine manufactured like that? //

According to a Boeing document titled "Apollo Spacecraft Engine Specific Impulse Part II dated October 1968 (bold mine):

the injector and valve assembly are first calibrated and then acceptance test fired in a water cooled steel chamber with an ablative liner. A single compatibility test of 460 second duration is then carried out. Finally, the injector and valve assembly are then assembled with their flight chamber and the complete engine is acceptance tested...

The description of the acceptance tests for the complete engine includes:

The engine and its thrust measuring rig are mounted horizontally in a capsule. Altitude pressure is obtained by a steam ejector and maintained during engine firing by an exhaust driven diffuser. Propellant tanks are pressurized with helium. There is provision for both temperature conditioning and helium saturating the propellants. A minimum of two satisfactory engine acceptance tests of 15 second duration have to be carried out. ... Throat and exit area measurements are taken prior to the first test and after the last in each test series.