It was designed to avoid some of the perceived problems with FORTRAN for backward compatibility with historic Buran ( spacecraft ) ALGOL software.

First conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a three-man spacecraft to follow the one-man Project Mercury which put the first Americans in space, Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal of " landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth " by the end of the 1960s, which he proposed in a May 25, 1961 address to Congress.

Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Lunar Module ( LM ) on the Moon on July 20, 1969 and walked on its surface while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command spacecraft, and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24.

It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit ; Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while the final Apollo 17 mission marked the sixth Moon landing and the ninth manned mission beyond low Earth orbit.

While the Mercury capsule could only support one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, the Apollo spacecraft was to be able to carry three astronauts on a circumlunar flight and eventually to a lunar landing.

The program was named after the Greek god of light, music, and the sun by NASA manager Abe Silverstein, who later said that " I was naming the spacecraft like I'd name my baby.

At this point during the pre-mission preparations, the Saturn V rocket's three stages were powered up and drinking water was pumped into the spacecraft.

By the time mission control issued the wake-up call to the crew for flight day two, the spacecraft was approximately away from the Earth, traveling at about.

As the Apollo 16 spacecraft was not due to arrive in lunar orbit until flight day four, flight days two and three were largely preparatory days, consisting of spacecraft maintenance and scientific research.

At the beginning of day three, the spacecraft was about away from the Earth.

The early part of day three was largely housekeeping, spacecraft maintenance and exchanging status reports with mission control in Houston, Texas.

The crew performed the Apollo light flash experiment, or ALFMED, to investigate " light flashes " that were seen by the astronauts when the spacecraft was dark, regardless of whether or not their eyes were open, on Apollo lunar flights.

At the end of the Apollo 16 crew's final full day in space, the spacecraft was approximately from Earth and closing at a rate of about.

When the wake-up call was issued to the Apollo 16 crew for their final day in space by capsule communicator Tony England, the spacecraft was about out from Earth, traveling just over.

The main mission objective was to verify performance of Spacelab systems, determine the interface capability of the orbiter, and measure the environment created by the spacecraft.

Two other satellites made observations at the time of the impact: the Ulysses spacecraft, primarily designed for solar observations, was pointed towards Jupiter from its location 2. 6 AU away, and the distant Voyager 2 probe, some 44 AU from Jupiter and on its way out of the Solar System following its encounter with Neptune in 1989, was programmed to look for radio emission in the 1 – 390 kHz range.

The Elektronika MK-52 calculator ( using the extended B3-34 command set, and featuring internal EEPROM memory for storing programs and external interface for EEPROM cards and other periphery ) was used in Soviet spacecraft program ( for Soyuz TM-7 flight ) as a backup of the board computer.

* 1995 – The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

Deep Space 1 was the first spacecraft to use Ion powered rocketry, in contrast to the traditional chemical powered rockets.

The next spacecraft to use Autonav was Deep Impact.

The next spacecraft to use NSTAR engines was the Dawn spacecraft, with three redundant units.

Over the years, NASA has launched a series of Explorer spacecraft carrying a wide variety of scientific investigations.

RTGs had been used for years in planetary exploration without mishap: the Lincoln Experimental Satellites 8 / 9, launched by the U. S. Department of Defense, had 7 % more plutonium on board than Galileo, and the two Voyager spacecraft each carried 80 % as much plutonium as Galileo did.

Currently, the only spacecraft to use a solar sail as the main method of production is IKAROS which was launched by JAXA on May 21, 2010.

* 1959 – Luna 1, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon and to orbit the Sun, is launched by the Soviet Union.

* 2009 – The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ( LRO ), a NASA robotic spacecraft is launched.

* 1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

On January 19, 2006, the first spacecraft mission to explore the Kuiper belt, New Horizons, was launched.

Laika, a stray dog, originally named Kudryavka ( Little Curly ), underwent training with two other dogs, and was eventually chosen as the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.

After the success of Sputnik 1, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, wanted a spacecraft launched on November 7, 1957, the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Other Mariner-based spacecraft, launched since Voyager, included the Magellan probe to Venus, and the Galileo probe to Jupiter.

rightThe Mariner 5 spacecraft was launched to Venus on June 14, 1967 and arrived in the vicinity of the planet in October 1967.

rightThe Mariner 10 spacecraft launched on November 3, 1973 and was the first to use a gravity assist trajectory, accelerating as it entered the gravitational influence of Venus, then being flung by the planet's gravity onto a slightly different course to reach Mercury.

Mariner 4 ( together with Mariner 3 known as Mariner-Mars 1964 ) was the fourth in a series of spacecraft, launched on November 28, 1964, intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode and performed the first successful flyby of the planet Mars, returning the first pictures of the Martian surface.

* 1981 – Space Shuttle program: mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.

* 1968 – The first live telecast from a manned spacecraft, the Apollo 7, launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the U. S. A.

* 1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

STS-93, launched on July 23, 1999, was commanded by Lt. Col. Eileen Collins, the first female Commander of a U. S. spacecraft.

If the CSM failed, the spacecraft and Saturn IB for the next Skylab mission would have been launched with two astronauts to retrieve the crew ; given Skylab's ample supplies, its residents would have been able to wait up to several weeks for the rescue mission.

The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961.

Prior to a manned spaceflight, the Soviets launched several precursor unmanned missions between May 1960 and March 1961, to test and develop the Vostok rocket and Vostok spacecraft technology.

** Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.

The United States developed the first ( and to date only ) reusable spacecraft system with the Space Shuttle program, first launched in 1981.

* January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles.

** The Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy, to be the first man-made satellite to leave the solar system.