NASA, Apollo Spacecraft Ascent, 1966

The Apollo spacecraft was composed of three parts designed to accomplish the American Apollo program's goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by the end of the 1960s and returning them safely to Earth. The expendable (single-use) spacecraft consisted of a combined command and service module (CSM) and a lunar module (LM). Two additional components complemented the spacecraft stack for space vehicle assembly: a spacecraft-LM adapter (SLA) designed to shield the LM from the aerodynamic stress of launch and to connect the CSM to the Saturn launch vehicle; and a launch escape system (LES) to carry the crew in the command module safely away from the launch vehicle in the event of a launch emergency. The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. The three-stage liquid-propellant super heavy-lift launch vehicle was developed to support the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon and was later used to launch Skylab, the first American space station. The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload. As of 2019, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status

Picture No

12697665

Media ID

47708616

Size

4350px x 3270px (4.0MB)

Credit

NASA/Science Source/Mary Evans