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To the moon, Alice!
A brief history of lunar exploration
In this story:
(CNN) -- When earthlings set out to slip the bonds of Earth, the moon was an obvious first stop.
Earth's nearest neighbor, the moon was the most studied object in the night sky long before the first rocket launch -- a talisman for lovers, an emblem for dreamers, and a familiar friend to astronomers.
When people and nations decided to shoot for the stars, it was inevitable that they would shoot the moon. As with many early milestones in the early days of the space race, the Soviet Union scored the first hit.
First steps: unmanned missions
In 1957 and 1958, the International Geophysical Year -- a worldwide project to explore the Earth and its surroundings -- prompted the United States and the Soviet Union to strike out toward the moon.
In 1959, the Soviet Union got the first close look, as the Luna 1 probe passed within 4,660 miles of the moon and fell into an orbit around the sun. Luna 2 was a bigger hit -- literally, as it impacted the lunar surface.
Luna 3, in the same year, flew past the moon, sending back the first pictures of the "dark side" -- the side that faces away from Earth.
The United States got its first taste of moon dust in 1964, when the unmanned Ranger 7 spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface. Ranger 8 and 9 followed in 1965, also putting small dents in the moon's surface and its mysteries.
The Soviet Luna 9 probe was a landmark, making a soft landing on the moon in 1966. It sent a few pictures back before its batteries died. The American Surveyor 1 landed a few months later, in the same area of the moon, making the Cold War rivals neighbors of sorts. Surveyor 1 sent back 11,000 pictures over the course of a month in operation.
The moon became a hot destination for machines, as three more Luna probes and three U.S. Lunar Orbiter probes circled the moon in 1966. In 1966 and 1967, a total of 14 U.S. and Soviet probes orbited and landed on the moon, in the first extraterrestrial rush hour.
The American craft were there with a specific agenda -- to find a suitable landing site for the manned Apollo missions, which President John F. Kennedy had raised to a national quest. After Kennedy's death in 1963, succeeding presidents carried on the trek as a nod to his memory, and as a point of national pride.
Kennedy declared that Americans would set the goals of walking on and exploring the moon by the end of the 1960s, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." In the late 1960s, the road would indeed prove to be hard -- even tragic.
Apollo: 'one giant leap...'
On January 27, 1967, astronauts Virgil Grissom (one of the seven original Mercury astronauts), Edward White and Roger Chaffee entered the first Apollo capsule for a pre-flight test. All three were killed when a fire swept through the Apollo command module.
Manned flights were placed on hold while the fire was investigated. The missions designated Apollo 4, 5, and 6 (no missions were designated Apollo 2 or 3) were unmanned test flights. Apollo 7 flew in Earth orbit, to test the techniques and technology that would go to the moon.
NASA decided it was ready. Apollo 8 orbited the moon, testing more of the systems that would take astronauts to the moon. Farther from home than any human had ever been, the Apollo 8 crew sent back startling pictures of Earth from afar -- and live TV.
Apollo 9 tested docking with the lunar lander, in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 again orbited the moon, and sent back color TV, simulating every step of a manned landing. Except the last step.
The pace was frenzied -- from the launch of Apollo 8 to the launch of Apollo 11, less than seven months passed. Then, on July 20, 1969, Earth received the first transmission from another heavenly body:
"Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed."
Neil Armstrong cautiously climbed down the ladder from the lunar module, dubbed "Eagle," and took the first steps on a non-Earth surface, proclaiming it "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."
Astronauts again walked on the moon aboard Apollo 12, landing just 200 meters from the Surveyor 3 lander. In the nearly three years since the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA and the public had enjoyed a string of successes, and had perhaps forgotten that space, like any frontier, was not explored without risk. They would soon be reminded.
In April 1970, Apollo 13, planned as another manned lunar landing, was cut short when the service module -- which housed the engines and fuel for the journey to the moon -- suffered an explosion. Low on fuel, low on oxygen, and low on power, the astronauts used the lunar module as a lifeboat. It was a masterpiece of improvisation.
The mission was designated a failure, having succeeded in only one of its objectives -- the safe return of astronauts James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert Jr. and Fred W. Haise Jr. Once it was over, it was a failure NASA could live with.
Apollo 14 and 15 landed on the moon in 1971, and Apollo 16 and 17 followed in 1972. When 17's crew, Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt and Eugene A. Cernan, left the lunar surface, they knew that they were the last people to walk on the moon for a while -- a cash-strapped U.S. government planned no more Apollo missions.
A quarter century later, they're still the last.
After Apollo: high flights, low profile
Though the Soviets never sent a manned mission to the moon, they hardly took their gaze off it in the 1970s; six more U.S.S.R. probes landed on the moon after Apollo 11, some gathering and retuning samples to Earth. In August 1976, Luna 24 -- the last of its line -- brought back samples of lunar soil.
No more Soviet or Russian ships went to the moon, and it was 22 years after Apollo 17 before another American ship went there -- the Clementine probe, a 1994 Department of Defense project.
In the meantime, another player entered the space race. In 1990, the Japanese Hiten satellite, named after a Buddhist angel, orbited the moon. Another Japanese mission is planned for February or March of 1999.
The launch of the Lunar Prospector marks the first time NASA has sent a ship to the moon in 25 years and the start of a new chapter in American lunar exploration. The goal: to do what previous missions left undone, the mapping of the entire lunar surface and closer analysis of the moon's composition.
Related story:
- The last men on the moon - December 7, 1997
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