Introduction to Planetary Science

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy
of the USA (Figure 1.1) made a speech before
a joint session of Congress concerning urgent
national needs. In this speech, he proposed to
send an American astronaut to the Moon before
the end of the decade and to bring him back
alive:
“…I believe that this nation should commit itself to
achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing
a man on the moon and returning him safely to
the earth. No single space project in this period will
be more impressive to mankind, or more important
for the long-range exploration of space; and none
will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish…”
This bold proposal immediately captured the
support of the American people who were
concerned at the time because the USA had fallen
behind the Soviet Union in launching spacecraft
into Earth orbit (Sorensen, 1965).
The accomplishments of the Soviet Union in
the exploration of space at that time included
the launching of Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit
on October 4, 1957, followed by Sputnik 2
on November 2 of the same year. During this
period, several American rockets exploded on
the launch pad until the Explorer 1 satellite
was launched on January 31, 1958, by a
rocket built by Wernher von Braun and his
team of engineers at the Redstone Arsenal
near Huntsville, Alabama (Ward, 2005). Subsequently,
the USA launched seven Pioneer spacecraft
between October 11, 1958 and December
15, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for
planned flybys of the Moon, but all of them either
missed the Moon or malfunctioned after launch
(Weissman et al., 1999).
The Soviet Union also had its share of failures
with the Luna program designed to explore the
1
1
The Urge to Explore
Moon. However, Luna 3, launched on October
4, 1959, did reach the Moon and photographed
the farside, which had never before been seen
by human eyes. The Soviet Union achieved
another important success when Yuri Gagarin
orbited the Earth on April 12, 1961, and returned
safely.
In the meantime, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) had designed and
built a spacecraft for Project Mercury whose goal
it was to put humans into space. On April 1,
1959, seven military test pilots were selected to
be the first Mercury astronauts, including Alan
Shepard who carried out a 15 minute suborbital
flight on May 5, 1961, followed by a second
suborbital flight on July 21, 1961, by Virgil
“Guss” Grissom. Finally, on February 20, 1962,
John Glenn orbited the Earth three times in a
Mercury capsule (Glenn, 1999).
When viewed in this perspective, President
Kennedy’s dramatic proposal of May 25, 1961, to
put a man on the Moon was a giant leap forward.
It was intended to rouse the American people
from their depression and to demonstrate to the
world that the USA possessed the technology to
achieve this goal and that it had the collective will
to carry it out. Therefore, President Kennedy’s
proposal was primarily motivated by political
considerations related to the Cold War with the
USSR. He did not say that the astronauts should
explore the Moon by taking photographs and by
collecting rocks, nor did he mention how many
flights should take place. These matters were
advocated later by geologists at academic institutions
and by members of the United States
Geological Survey and were adopted by NASA
with some reluctance (Wilhelms, 1993).
The American effort to put a man on the Moon
succeeded brilliantly when Neil Armstrong and