Although the United States put forward manned landing on the moon in 196 1, it does not mean that the United States achieved manned landing on the moon in this year, but on July 20, 1969, astronaut Armstrong successfully set foot on the surface of the moon and became the first person to land on the moon. Because manned landing on the moon involves flying around the moon, landing on the moon, taking off on the moon and other technologies, which were blank in the United States at that time, the United States verified these technologies almost simultaneously during this period.
During the period of 196 1-1965, the United States implemented the rover program and launched nine rover detectors to study the appearance of the whole moon, measure the radiation near the moon, evaluate the influence of the lunar environment on the landing mission of manned spacecraft, and prepare for Apollo landing on the moon.
During the period of 1966-1968, the United States implemented the surveyor program, in which seven probes were launched, five of which successfully landed on the surface of the moon. The implementation of this plan made the United States master the technology of landing on the moon. One of them, Surveyor 6, successfully tried to take off from the surface of the moon after landing on it.
During the period of 1966-1967, the United States implemented the lunar orbiter program to photograph the front and back of the moon and select landing sites for manned spacecraft to land on the moon.
During the period of 1965-1966, the United States also implemented the Gemini spacecraft program. In this plan, the United States has mastered the technology of maneuvering, docking and extravehicular activity.
It can be seen that in order to realize manned landing on the moon, the United States has made a lot of preparations in the early stage. Due to the tight time, some projects were carried out almost at the same time, which saved a lot of time and enabled the United States to achieve manned landing on the moon in just a few years.
From June 5438 to February 2020, China launched the Chang 'e-5 probe and successfully retrieved precious moon samples from the surface of the moon. Structurally, the Apollo moon landing spacecraft is similar to our Chang 'e-5 probe. For example, Chang 'e V consists of four parts: orbiter, returner, lander and riser. Apollo moon landing spacecraft consists of command module, service module and lunar module (lunar module includes upgrade and descent stages), and the process of landing on the moon, taking off on the surface of the moon and returning to Earth is similar.
The complete Apollo spacecraft will go to the moon after launch. After reaching the lunar orbit, it will release the lunar module and send astronauts to the lunar surface, while the combination of command module and service module will remain on the lunar surface. In the process of landing on the moon, the descending stage of the lunar module will start the engine to brake and slow down, so that the lunar module will land on the surface of the moon softly. When astronauts finish their mission on the surface of the moon, they will take the lunar module to upgrade into the lunar orbit and dock with the combination of command module and service module. After the astronauts enter the assembly, they will return to Earth together, and the upgraded version will be thrown away.
Apollo 1 1 was launched on July 1969 and landed on the moon on July 20/969. Shortly after landing on the moon, the astronauts made an upgrade, went into space and began their journey back to Earth. The design life of the upgraded version abandoned in the lunar orbit is only 10 days, but now research shows that the upgraded version abandoned in the lunar orbit 52 years ago may still be flying around the moon.
According to the research paper published in Planetary and Space Science, although many people think that the lunar module equipment should have crashed on the surface of the moon long ago, researcher james may Meador tried to accurately draw the upgraded orbit of Apollo 1 1, hoping to predict its position when it hit the surface of the moon. The simulation results show that the orbit of lunar module equipment will always remain stable and may remain so.
The height of satellites orbiting the earth will continue to drop until they hit the earth's atmosphere and burn. For example, the world's first satellite, Putnik 1, crashed into the atmosphere a few months after entering space. Why didn't this lunar module device land on the moon after flying around the moon for decades?
The reason is very simple, that is, the earth has a dense atmosphere, even in space, there will still be a small amount of air, which means that when satellites fly around the earth, they will still be affected by air resistance, and their flight speed and altitude will drop. Slowly, these satellites orbiting the earth will fall into the atmosphere. There is no air on the moon, which means that these lunar module devices will fly around the moon inertia.
Some friends may worry that these fragments will collide with other lunar orbit detectors when flying around the moon. Why not let this device control the fall to the moon? In the process of sampling the lunar surface, our Chang 'e-5 probe was controlled to land on the moon again after the riser entered the lunar orbit and docked with the return capsule assembly and handed over the sample. The reason why the lunar module equipment of Apollo moon landing spacecraft didn't control the landing may be that this aspect was not taken into account in that year, or it may be that the scientific and technological level of that year was difficult to control the rise of the lunar surface and control the landing 380,000 kilometers away, so it kept flying around the moon.