i believe that this nation should commit
itself
to achieving the goal
before this decade is out
of landing a man on the moon and
returning him safely to the earth we
choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things not because they
are easy but because they are hard
because that goal
will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills
the date was may 25th 1961.
thrust into a race for international
space supremacy
president john f kennedy passed the
torch to a young national aeronautics
and space administration
the complex sophisticated space shuttle
of today with its ability to routinely
carry six or more people into space
began as a tiny capsule where even one
person felt cramped the mercury program
the seven flights of project mercury
proved that humans could survive in
space
the next step was gemini expanding our
reach
the two unmanned and 10-man flights of
project gemini subjected man and
equipment to flights of up to two weeks
in duration
america thrilled to the first spacewalk
a 20-minute extravehicular exercise
the cumulative experience of these early
man flights gave nasa a foundation of
confidence for its next project
apollo the national effort that
fulfilled a dream as old as humanity a
human on the moon
from mercury to apollo the space program
depended on the goddard space flight
center for its link to earth
for goddard was the home of the manned
space flight network the central control
for 29 ground tracking stations four
tracking ships and eight specially
modified tracking planes
these were scattered around the world to
keep in constant communication with the
astronauts in their vehicle
for a manned mission to the moon project
apollo would need a monster rocket
called saturn 5
saturn 5 was just one item on nasa's
long shopping list
years of testing and designing went into
preparing astronauts
rockets and equipment for the first
lunar landing
cape canaveral soon to be named cape
kennedy needed a building 525 feet tall
where the saturn v the apollo spacecraft
and the moon landing ship could be put
together atop a track carrier as big as
a baseball diamond
before humans could land on the moon it
was necessary to learn about the
conditions there
in those days we were not at all sure
about what the space environment was and
we were very concerned about
the
various radiations from the sun and from
outer space and what effect they would
have on the men who were in this capsule
picture taking ranger spacecraft sent
back thousands of lunar photographs
before crash landing into the lunar
surface
as the time grew closer to the historic
moon landing guided crews checked and
rechecked every circuit every antenna
every console to assure that nothing
would go wrong during this landmark
mission
and we were we had the responsibility of
testing these facilities
from an operation standpoint utilizing
the facilities of nascom
and we
we supported 24 hours a day for a
monthly period of time
during a program called we used to call
it agnoff but it's apollo goss
qualification navigation program
where we used to track lunar orbiter
with the 30 foot antennas parabolic
antennas which we called usb antennas
that were located at the demand space
flight stations around the world
as far as preparation for the mission
and troubleshooting circuits when they
would fail
i like to think of it and i used to call
it then the great db witch hunt because
we had made promises to the network that
we could exchange test tones between our
center and the remote tracking stations
and get those test tones back plus or
minus three db which is a pretty
stringent requirement for the
air-to-ground
astronaut voice relay circuits
the man destined to put the first
footprint on the moon was commander neil
a armstrong
a former nasa test pilot who had
experience in space during project
gemini
edwin e aldrin jr known as buzz who
would be the second man on the moon had
a doctor of science degree in
astronautics
michael collins with a bachelor of
science degree was to fly the apollo
command ship in parking orbit around the
moon while his fellow crewmen explored
below
the day arrived and nasa was ready
armstrong went aboard at 6 54 a.m and
took position in the apollo's left hand
couch
five minutes to lift off and still
counting
t-minus 15 seconds guidance is internal
12 11 10
9
ignition sequence start 6.
perhaps a million americans came to cape
kennedy to see the astronauts off
so did 3 000 newsmen from 56 countries
half of the u.s congress and the vice
president of the united states
former president lyndon b johnson an
avid space program supporter and mrs
johnson were among those who followed
the apollo 11 liftoff
millions more watched the launch on
worldwide television
immediately following launch
the 30-foot antennas at goddard's
merritt island tracking station picked
up communications with the spacecraft
then handed the circuits off to the
ground station at grand bahama island
then bermuda followed by the tracking
ship vanguard in the atlantic ocean and
so on around the world
goddard was the control center for all
the ground stations that were around the
world that we're going to be supporting
and that we're supporting the manna
flight program
nascom's the central hub of the nasa
communications network and still is to
this day
which means all of the signals coming in
from the remote tracking stations reach
goddard before we hand them off to other
facilities but during apollo everything
came into goddard first so anything that
was said
as an example the the astronaut voices
would be in a digital format from the
spacecraft but when they reached the
tracking stations they were put into an
analog form and traveled that way into
goddard where we conferenced all of the
voice circuits together and then handed
them off to jsc to houston
views of their home from the apollo
spacecraft reminded earthlings the world
over of how fragile their planet is and
of the need to preserve and protect its
resources
the pictures they saw and the video
coverage we have today would look like
nothing more than gobbledygook without
the special camera and processing
techniques developed by a team of
goddard engineers
not only did they have a couple modes of
operation which were simply let's try
this if this doesn't work but
we also had a very limited bandwidth and
we the grand equipment had to
reconstruct the picture so that would be
usable the picture as transmitted
would not be able to be telecast on a
home receiver
as viewed it would be a very flickering
picture that
would not be too usable except for
possibly an engineer evaluation
when the camera on the lunar lander
began to transmit pictures as it
approached the moon the goddard team
received the signal at a special
processing facility set up in sydney
australia
i recall particularly the the australian
people were just
so excited and they actually set up
television monitors in
the uh i believe it was called peace
cross the main square in sydney where
thousands of people came out to to
witness this
contact light
okay engine stop
aca had a defense
boat control both auto decent engine
command override off engine arm off 13
is in we copy it down eagle
uh
tranquility base here the eagle has
landed
the first word may have been houston but
the first people to hear it were
goddard's voice controllers
i'm going to step off the laminate
it's
the primary package was a seismic
package the
two of detailed moonquakes
and a
laser retro reflector package which is
quite small
but it had 64 cube reflectors in it
so they could use their lasers from the
earth and
find to fine-tune the distance between
the earth and the moon
those small retroreflectors are still
used today
by bouncing lasers off these lunar base
reflectors goddard scientists continue
to learn about the movement of the
earth's crustal plates with the same
accuracy as when they were first placed
on the moon
not long after noon the next day the
21st
the astronauts fired the ascent engine
and launched eagle on the first leg of
what was to be a triumphant return to
earth
apollo 11 splashed down at 12 50 p.m
eastern daylight time on july 24 1969
about 900 miles southwest of hawaii
two goddard satellites ats one and three
were used to relay television coverage
of the recovery operations to an anxious
world the big thing that we did and i
think well because it was spectacular
because everybody saw it was the
television through our microwave system
on the ats spacecraft at one time we
planted a little
12 15 foot antenna
on the flight deck of the carrier and
actually transmitted
to live television from the
carrier from what was going on on the
deck of the carrier
via the ats satellite back to the
networks it was the only possible live
call live television to the whole world
could see what was going on and of
course included in that
was the the actual recovery
apollo did more than reach for the
future
it refreshed our spirits and heightened
our awareness of the human potential
for the united states apollo provided
renewed confidence
that given the resolve resources and
commitment of a free people
the u.s can lead mankind in the great
adventure of space exploration
we lived through an era
and
part of that era was the the time that
john kennedy said
i challenge this nation to put a man in
orbit and return him safely within this
decade
uh pursuant to that i don't think any of
us will ever forget that
famous day in dallas
and then to put the men on the moon and
bring him back safely was quite
a monument memorial and i think all of
us felt very very strongly about that
we were a pretty young organization i i
think i was in my 20s and i think just
about all of the uh
the voice controllers and the contractor
workforce were were people in their 20s
and possibly early 30s
and it was a just a very exciting time
for us i mean we would put hours and
hours and hours of work in and we were
proud to do it because we did see our
piece in the puzzle
and what our what our own personal
accomplishments and we felt quite proud
that we were part of bringing that data
back to them because
there was a whole purpose to get science
data and that's what we did
i think the biggest satisfaction was
that it enabled everybody in the world
to see something
that was a one-shot one-time affair
which was the first step
and that's basically what we worked on
and
as other speakers that i've heard speak
said that we worked a lot of long hours
and
strenuous days and and i think everybody
that worked on that program probably
agrees that uh they didn't notice it it
was uh just too exciting to uh to to be
concerned about the hours you spent it
was a unique project and
we haven't been back in a long time and
it is something that
we were really proud to be a part of and
every country we went to they were all
proud to be participating well it was a
great thing for
for for the united states
it was a great thing for nasa
and i have to think it was a great thing
for goddard space flight center
you