October 11

Apollo Returns to Flight

1968 — Apollo 7 Carries the Apollo Program Back into Space

15:02:45 UTC

On October 11, 1968, three astronauts sat atop a Saturn IB rocket at Cape Kennedy's Launch Complex 34. Below them was the same launch complex where, less than two years earlier, tragedy had struck the Apollo program. On January 27, 1967, astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee had died when fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a ground test. The accident exposed serious problems in spacecraft design, materials, testing procedures, manufacturing, and management. NASA halted crewed Apollo flights. The spacecraft was extensively redesigned. Now it had to prove itself. At 15:02:45 UTC on October 11, 1968, Apollo 7 lifted from Launch Complex 34. Commander Walter “Wally” Schirra, command module pilot Donn Eisele, and lunar module pilot Walter Cunningham became the first people to fly aboard an Apollo spacecraft. There was no lunar module on this mission. There would be no journey to the Moon. Apollo 7 would remain in Earth orbit. But the success of the entire lunar program depended upon what happened there. The spacecraft was the redesigned Block II Command and Service Module, incorporating many of the changes made after Apollo 1. The dangerous inward-opening hatch had been replaced with a hatch that could be opened much more quickly. Flammable materials inside the cabin had been reduced or replaced. Wiring and plumbing were improved. Quality-control procedures were strengthened. The spacecraft had undergone thousands of changes. Now astronauts would test it in the environment for which it had been designed. Apollo 7 entered Earth orbit normally. Over the next 10 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes, and 3 seconds, the crew would put the spacecraft through an exhaustive series of tests. They fired the large Service Propulsion System engine repeatedly. This engine was especially important. On future lunar missions it would be responsible for major maneuvers, including entering and leaving lunar orbit. If it failed at the wrong moment, astronauts could be stranded far from Earth. Apollo 7 demonstrated that the engine could restart reliably. The crew also practiced maneuvers associated with rendezvous. After separating from the Saturn IVB upper stage, Schirra turned the Apollo spacecraft around and approached the spent stage as though it were a lunar module. Future Apollo crews would have to perform related maneuvers during missions to the Moon. The spacecraft's electrical, communications, guidance, navigation, environmental-control, and propulsion systems were tested repeatedly. The mission also introduced millions of people to another feature of Apollo. Live television from space. NASA had initially been reluctant to devote valuable crew time to television broadcasts. Schirra himself resisted an early request when it conflicted with the flight plan. But once transmissions began, viewers saw the astronauts floating inside the spacecraft and looking down at Earth. The broadcasts became enormously popular. Apollo 7's crew eventually received a special Emmy Award for the television coverage. The mission was not without difficulties. All three astronauts developed head colds. In weightlessness, congestion can be especially uncomfortable because bodily fluids do not drain in the familiar way they do on Earth. Fatigue, crowded working conditions, an ambitious flight plan, and disagreements with Mission Control contributed to increasing tension between the crew and controllers. The relationship became famously contentious. But those interpersonal difficulties should not obscure the technical result. The spacecraft worked. Apollo 7 completed 163 Earth orbits and traveled more than 4.5 million miles. On October 22, the command module splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. NASA considered the spacecraft's performance sufficiently successful to make an extraordinary decision. The next crewed Apollo mission would not simply repeat Apollo 7 at a greater distance. Apollo 8 would go to the Moon. Only about two months after Apollo 7 returned, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders would become the first humans to leave Earth orbit, travel to another world, and orbit the Moon. Apollo 7 had made that decision possible. And less than a year after Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham lifted from Launch Complex 34, Apollo 11 would land on the lunar surface.

Why It Matters: Apollo 7 was the first crewed flight of the redesigned Apollo spacecraft after the Apollo 1 tragedy. Its successful 11-day test demonstrated that the Command and Service Module could support the demanding missions ahead and gave NASA the confidence to send Apollo 8 around the Moon. Apollo 7 was therefore one of the crucial bridge missions between tragedy on the launch pad and the first human footsteps on another world.

 

Also on This Day

1958 — Pioneer 1 Becomes the First Spacecraft Launched by NASA

08:42:13 UTC

Only ten days after NASA officially began operations, the new agency attempted to send a spacecraft toward the Moon. At 08:42:13 UTC on October 11, 1958, a Thor-Able rocket lifted from Cape Canaveral carrying a small spacecraft originally known as Able 2. It soon became Pioneer 1. The mission had been inherited from programs already underway before NASA's creation, and the launch vehicle remained under U.S. Air Force responsibility. But Pioneer 1 became the first spacecraft launched under NASA's newly established authority. Its objective was ambitious. The spacecraft was intended to travel to the Moon and enter lunar orbit. Pioneer 1 weighed only about 38 kilograms—84 pounds. Its instruments included an ion chamber for measuring radiation, a magnetometer, a micrometeoroid detector, temperature sensors, and a television system intended to obtain images of the Moon. The mission did not proceed as planned. The launch vehicle's upper stage did not provide the required velocity. Pioneer 1 was traveling too slowly to reach the Moon. But the mission did not immediately end. The spacecraft climbed far beyond Earth before gravity pulled it back. It reached an altitude of approximately 114,000 kilometers, or about 71,000 miles—farther from Earth than any previous human-made object had traveled. During its flight, Pioneer 1 transmitted scientific information about the environment beyond Earth. Its measurements contributed to the rapidly developing study of Earth's radiation environment, which had received a major surprise earlier that year when Explorer 1 and Explorer 3 helped reveal the Van Allen radiation belts. After approximately 43 hours of flight, Pioneer 1 reentered Earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific on October 13. It had failed to reach its intended destination. Yet it had still traveled farther than any spacecraft before it and returned useful scientific information. Its historical importance also lies in its timing. NASA had begun operations only on October 1, 1958. Ten days later, it was already attempting to reach another world. The agency's first spacecraft mission was therefore not a cautious Earth-orbiting experiment. It was an attempted lunar mission.

Why It Matters: Pioneer 1 was the first spacecraft launched under NASA's authority and demonstrated the new agency's immediate ambition to move beyond Earth orbit. Although a launch-vehicle malfunction prevented it from reaching the Moon, the spacecraft set a distance record and returned useful measurements from near-Earth space.

1984 — Kathryn Sullivan Becomes the First American Woman to Walk in Space

EVA duration: 3 hours, 29 minutes

Six days after Space Shuttle Challenger launched on STS-41G, astronauts Kathryn Sullivan and David Leestma opened the airlock and moved into the Shuttle's payload bay. For Sullivan, October 11, 1984, became a historic day. She was the first American woman to perform a spacewalk. Sullivan was a geologist and oceanographer who had joined NASA as part of the astronaut class selected in 1978. That class fundamentally changed the composition of the American astronaut corps. It included NASA's first women astronauts and the first Black and Asian American astronauts selected for the corps. Sullivan and Sally Ride were both aboard STS-41G, making the mission the first spaceflight to include two women. But Sullivan was not the first woman anywhere in the world to perform a spacewalk. That distinction belonged to Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, who had conducted an EVA outside the Salyut 7 space station on July 25, 1984. Sullivan's milestone came less than three months later. Her spacewalk was not performed primarily to set a record. She and Leestma had work to do. One of their major tasks involved the Orbital Refueling System. Engineers wanted to determine whether spacecraft could someday be refueled while already in orbit. Such a capability could extend the operating lives of satellites and make spacecraft servicing more practical. The astronauts therefore demonstrated techniques for handling equipment and transferring fluids in weightlessness. The work involved hydrazine, a highly toxic propellant used by many spacecraft, although the demonstration used procedures designed to test the system safely. The EVA lasted 3 hours and 29 minutes. Sullivan also inspected equipment in Challenger's payload bay, including the large antenna associated with the Shuttle Imaging Radar experiment. The spacewalk added another milestone to a mission already filled with them. STS-41G carried the first seven-person spacecraft crew. It was the first mission with two women aboard. Sally Ride became the first American woman to make a second spaceflight. Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. And now Sullivan had become the first American woman to work outside a spacecraft. Her career would continue. She later flew aboard Discovery on STS-31, the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. Decades after leaving NASA, Sullivan accomplished another extraordinary first. In 2020, she descended to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, becoming the first woman to reach the deepest known point in Earth's oceans—and the first person to have both walked in space and visited Challenger Deep.

Why It Matters: Kathryn Sullivan's spacewalk marked another important expansion of participation in human spaceflight while also serving a practical engineering purpose. Her EVA with David Leestma tested techniques for orbital refueling, demonstrating that milestones in who explores space can occur alongside advances in what people are capable of doing there.

 

The Bigger Picture

October 11 is a day about building capability. Pioneer 1 attempted something NASA could not yet accomplish. Apollo 7 demonstrated something NASA absolutely had to accomplish. Kathryn Sullivan demonstrated something spacefarers hoped would become increasingly routine. Together, the three events show that progress in spaceflight is rarely a single leap from impossibility to mastery. It develops through stages. In 1958, NASA tried to reach the Moon only ten days after beginning operations. Pioneer 1 failed to get there. But the mission traveled farther from Earth than any previous spacecraft and returned useful data. Failure and achievement occupied the same flight. Ten years later, Apollo 7 faced a different challenge. NASA already knew how to place astronauts into Earth orbit. The question was whether the redesigned Apollo spacecraft could be trusted after the deaths of Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Apollo 7 provided the answer. It worked. That success allowed NASA to take the extraordinary next step of sending Apollo 8 to the Moon. By 1984, human spaceflight had matured further. Astronauts were not simply passengers proving that humans could survive beyond Earth. They were workers. Sullivan and Leestma went outside Challenger to experiment with technology for servicing spacecraft in orbit. This progression is important. Reach space. Learn to operate there safely. Learn to work there. And then expand what becomes possible. October 11 also reminds us that progress is not the same as perfection. Pioneer 1 missed the Moon. Apollo 7 succeeded technically while experiencing significant tension between its crew and Mission Control. Orbital refueling did not immediately become the routine practice envisioned by the STS-41G experiment. Yet each contributed knowledge. Space exploration advances not only through spectacular successes but through tests, partial successes, failures, redesigns, and lessons carried forward. Apollo 7 demonstrates that principle especially clearly. The spacecraft that rose from Launch Complex 34 in October 1968 existed in its redesigned form because another spacecraft had failed catastrophically on that same launch complex. NASA had investigated. Engineers had redesigned. Procedures had changed. Then people flew again. Less than ten months after Apollo 7 launched, humans stood on the Moon. The path from Earth to another world was not a straight line. It was a process of learning what worked, confronting what did not, and trying again.

At a Glance

1958 — 08:42:13 UTC — Pioneer 1 launches toward the Moon, becoming the first spacecraft launched under the authority of the newly operational NASA; a launch-vehicle malfunction prevents it from reaching its intended lunar destination.

1968 — 15:02:45 UTC — Apollo 7 launches Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham on the first crewed Apollo mission, beginning the critical Earth-orbital test of the redesigned Command and Service Module.

1984 — EVA duration 3 hours, 29 minutes — Kathryn Sullivan leaves Space Shuttle Challenger with David Leestma during STS-41G, becoming the first American woman to walk in space while helping demonstrate orbital-refueling techniques.