The third manned lunar landing, which increased to almost 200 the man-hours spent by astronauts on the Moon's surface, differed in character from previous missions. The dominant aspect of the first landing was, simply, that it was done. The second landing was notable for the precision that brought a manned spacecraft to rest 183 m from its target site, a robot spacecraft dispatched to the Moon two and a half years before. But the outstanding characteristic of the third landing, when Antares came down to the rolling foothills of Fra Mauro, was the exceptionally rich harvest in lunar science...

In richness of scientific return, the Apollo 15 voyage to the plains at Hadley compares with voyages of Darwin's H.M.S. Beagle, and those of the Endeavour and Resolution. Just as those epic ocean voyages set the stage for a revolution in the biological sciences and exploration generally, so also the flight of Falcon and Endeavor did the same in planetary and Earth sciences and will guide the course of future explorations. The boundary achievements of Apollo 15 cannot now be established. As an author of a following paper points out, the mission was not finished at splashdown in the Pacific,...

Ever since Galileo's telescope made the rugged lunar surface more clearly visible (in 1610), men have strived to learn more about the origin and history of the Earth's big natural satellite, and never has so much progress been made as in the last few years. The fifth manned lunar landing was in a highlands area, quite different from the sites visited previously, and the discoveries there now seem certain to result in significant improvements in the hypotheses of lunar scientists. Much of the Moon's surface is similar to the Descartes Highlands that the Apollo 16 astronauts examined. From this...

The character of the Apollo 17 mission to Taurus-Littrow was such that it invited superlatives. By almost all measures, it was an immensely successful voyage of exploration: the greatest harvest of new scientific data, the most kilometers traveled on the surface of the Moon, the largest number of scientific experiments performed-both in real time, by a scientist on the surface, and by automatic instrumentation installed and left behind-the longest time spent on and around the Moon, and the greatest amount of lunar samples returned for study in laboratories all over the world. But numerical...

This history of Johnson Space Center (JSC) is a detailed chronicle of the U.S. space program with emphasis on humans in space and on the ground. It realistically balances the role of the highly visible astronaut with the mammoth supporting team who provide the nuts, bolts, and gas to keep the train on the track. It recognizes the early political and technical geniuses who had the vision and ability to create NASA and JSC and keep them expanding at a rapid pace. The history of the Johnson Space Center focuses on an unusual slice of time and human affairs. It has been a time of great changes,...

This document is a catalog and readers guide to lessons learned, experience, and technical history reports, as well as compilation volumes prepared by United Space Alliance personnel for the NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC) Flight Dynamics Division. It is intended to make it easier for future generations of engineers to locate knowledge capture documentation from the Shuttle Program. The first chapter covers observations on documentation quality and research challenges encountered during the Space Shuttle and Orion programs. The second chapter covers the knowledge capture approach used to...

Early in 1984, NASA asked the Space Science Board to undertake a study to determine the principal scientific issues that the disciplines of space science would face during the period from about 1995 to 2015. This request was made partly because NASA expected the Space Station to become available at the beginning of this period, and partly because the missions needed to implement research strategies previously developed by the various committees of the board should have been launched or their development under way by that time. A two-year study was called for. To carry out the study the board...

This book was designed to answer questions about the origins of NASA-associated names. The impetus for its preparation came from the Johnson Space Center Historian, James M. Grimwood, who called attention to the need for such a compilation. If, besides answering specific questions, the book raises further questions or stimulates the reader to delve further into the subject of space exploration, it will have served its purpose well. Names given to spaceflight projects and programs have originated from no single source or method. Some have their foundations in mythology and astrology, some in...

This technical history is intended to provide a technical audience with an introduction to the rendezvous and proximity operations history of the Space Shuttle Program. It details the programmatic constraints and technical challenges encountered during shuttle development in the 1970s and over thirty years of shuttle missions. An overview of rendezvous and proximity operations on many shuttle missions is provided, as well systems and flight techniques evolved to meet new programmatic objectives. Since the publication of the first edition in October of 2006 additional historical information...

At the height of the space race, 6,000 men and women operated NASA's Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network at some two dozen locations across five continents. This network, known as the STDN, began its operation by tracking Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite that was launched into space by the former Soviet Union. Over the next 40 years, the network was destined to play a crucial role on every near-Earth space mission that NASA flew. Whether it was receiving the first television images from space, tracking Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back, or data acquiring for Earth...