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Apollo Program The first Apollo program took place in 1968 and continued well into the 1970's. The Apollo Spacecraft is made up of two parts: 1)the command and service, and 2)lunar lander module. The command module is the control center where the astronauts stay. The service module is unpressurized with fuel cells, batteries, high grain antenna radiators, water, etc. The objective for the lunar module was to desced and orbit the moon, to land on the moon and after a period of time use the ascent stage to go back into orbit and dock. The lunar module is divided into two parts: the descent and ascent modules. The descent is made of the essentials to land on the moon. The ascent module is where the crew cabin is as well as the docking port and what flew back to the rest of the Apollo spacecraft. Pictured, to the right is a half scale model of the Apollo lunar module. Below, is full scale model of the command module.
Moon rocks are similar to Earth's rocks because of Oxygen found in them. The lunar samples contain high levels of Titanium. Also, a new mineral was found in the moon rocks and named 'Armalcolite' after the astronauts who performed the first lunar landing mission. There are three sources of moon rocks on Earth: 1) The Apollo missions, 2) the Soviet Union's Luna U.S.S.R. missions, and 3) rocks being naturally ejected from
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) was the first combined effort of the U.S. and Soviet Space Programs. The first time rendezvous took place in July 1975, but 2 years before the actual space flight the astronauts and cosmonauts spent a great deal of time with each. They learned about each others' culture, language, and became very good friends. General Stafford was the commander of the Apollo with Vance Brand and Deke Slayton on board. This was the last Apollo mission and the last manned launch until the shuttle. Alexei Leonov commanded the Soyuz mission with Valeri Kubasov. The two spacecrafts docked on July 17, 1975. Three hours later the famous handshake in space by General Stafford and Leonov, symbolically ended the space race. Pictured are the mannequins of General Stafford in his back up gear and Leonov in his flight gear.
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This Lunar sample comes from an Apollo mission. Through out all the Apollo missions 2,415 samples were collected. This sample comes from the lunar highlands and was collected on the Apollo 17 mission. 