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.

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.

Beginning with Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 flight, the astronauts named their own spacecraft, and all added " 7 " to the name or callsign to acknowledge the teamwork of they and their fellow astronauts.

The spacecraft takes its name from four British ships of exploration named Discovery, primarily HMS Discovery, one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook during his third and final major voyage from 1776 to 1779.

The first three spacecraft were built around him and the design was humorously named the Gusmobile.

In a joking nod to the sinking of his Mercury craft Grissom named the first Gemini spacecraft Molly Brown after the popular Broadway show The Unsinkable Molly Brown ; NASA publicity officials were unhappy with this name.

After the safe return of Gemini III, NASA announced new spacecraft would not be named.

The three men named their spacecraft Apollo 1.

The mission, which the men named Apollo 1 in June, was originally planned for late 1966 ( perhaps concurrent with the last Gemini mission ), but delays in the spacecraft development pushed the launch into 1967.

The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over.

The spacecraft which carried Lunokhod 1 was named Luna 17.

The spacecraft which carried Lunokhod 1 was named Luna 17.

* In Star Trek: Voyager, a fictional spacecraft named Ares IV ( not to be confused with the actual Ares IV rocket ) is launched in early 2032 and trapped inside a graviton ellipse, a huge body of subspace energy travelling through the galaxy.

The spacecraft was originally named Odysseus, because of its lengthy and indirect trajectory to near Solar distance.

* 1961-US, a Mercury capsule named Freedom 7 with Alan B. Shepard, spacecraft was launched by a Redstone rocket on a ballistic trajectory suborbital flight.

The spacecraft landed near the large lunar crater Tycho, named for the famous astronomer.

Sputnik 2 (,, Satellite 2 ), or ' Prosteyshiy Sputnik 2 ( PS-2, Elementary Satellite 2 )), was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit, on November 3, 1957, and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika.

The man is really a training astronaut named Mike Ferris, confined to an isolation room located within an aircraft hangar for 484 hours and 36 minutes, testing to see if he can stay sane cooped up in a small spacecraft for the duration of a trip to the Moon.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, has said that his Dragon spacecraft was named after " Puff the Magic Dragon.

Discovered by Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, it is named after Proteus, the shape-changing sea god of Greek mythology.

Grissom, hoping to avoid duplication of the experience with his Mercury flight Liberty Bell 7 in which the capsule sank after splashdown, named the Gemini 3 spacecraft Molly Brown, in a playful reference to the Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

The spacecraft was named Liberty Bell 7 piloted by astronaut Virgil I.

The Mercury spacecraft was named Aurora 7 and made three Earth orbits, piloted by astronaut Scott Carpenter.

If Slayton had flown MA-7, his spacecraft would have been named Delta 7, as this would have been the fourth manned flight and Delta ( Δ ) is the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet.