Apollo 11 Launch. The first Moon landing mission took place on July 16, 1969. The massive Saturn V rocket lifted off from NASA’s Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Commander Neil A. Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins at 9:32 a.m. EDT.
And four days later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended in the Lunar Module “Eagle” to explore the Sea of Tranquility region of the moon while Michael Collins orbited overhead in the Command Module “Columbia.” Neil and Buzz gathered samples of lunar rock and deployed scientific experiments that transmitted data about the lunar environment.
Watch this film from 1966, showing the construction of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
From where did Apollo 11 launch the Saturn V rocket?
The massive, 363-feet tall Saturn V rocket launches on the Apollo 11 mission from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, at 9:32 a.m. EDT. Apollo 11 was the United States’ first lunar landing mission.
When astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken took off on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), they departed from Kennedy Space Center‘s famous Pad 39A. It is the same one used by the last NASA astronauts to launch from American soil, the Space Shuttle Atlantis crew in July 2011.
Launch Complex 39 “Moonport”
Launch Complex 39 A and B have been the site of all U.S. human-crewed spaceflight that went into orbit since December 1968, including the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
That exclusivity will end eventually, as Boeing will launch its Starliner crews to the ISS from the Space Force side of Cape Canaveral, but NASA’s Launch Complex 39 will continue to serve long into the future.
Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) is a launch site located at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The rocket site and its number of facilities were originally built as the Apollo program’s “Moonport” and later modified for the NASA Space-Shuttle program.
The historic Launch Complex 39 consists of three launch sub-complexes or “pads.” They are; 39A, 39B, and 39C. A VAB or Vehicle Assembly Building. A unique Crawlerway used by crawler-transporters to carry mobile launcher platforms between the Vehicle Assembly Building and the pads.
The Orbiter Processing Facility buildings, a Launch Control Center containing the firing rooms. And also, a news facility famous for the iconic countdown clock seen on television coverage and many photos. And numerous logistical and operational support buildings.
SpaceX Leases Launch Complex 39A
SpaceX leases Launch Complex 39A from NASA and has modified the pad to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. NASA started modifying Launch Complex 39B in 2007 to accommodate the now-defunct Constellation program. Currently, it is planning it for the Artemis program. A pad to be designated 39C, which would have been a copy of pad 39A and pad 39B, was originally planned for Apollo but was never built. A smaller pad, also designated 39C, was constructed from January to June 2015, to provide small-lift launch vehicles.
NASA launches from pads 39A and 39B have been supervised by the NASA Launch Control Center (LCC), which is located 3 miles (4.8 km) from the launch pads. LC-39 is one of several launch sites that share the radar and tracking services of the Eastern Test Range.
The agency recently finished the modification of the Vehicle Assembly Building, launch platforms, and the SLS pad. Therefore we will see the Crawler-Transporter hauling a rocket to the launch pad again. In 2015, NASA also built a new 39C pad for small, commercial satellite launch vehicles.
Thus, when astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley took off, they ascended from a historic pad, previously used for the first human-crewed journeys to the Moon and many important shuttle flights.
Launch Complex 39 will continue to help groundbreaking journeys in the human exploration of space well into the future, more than 51 years after its baptism-by-fire in the first Saturn V rocket launch in 1967.
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