Apollo 20
Apollo 20 was a scheduled flight to the moon during the Apollo program of NASA . The flight was canceled in January 1970 for financial reasons.
Schedule and landing site
Shortly after the successful moon landing of Apollo 11 , NASA announced the further program on July 29, 1969. Accordingly, Apollo 20 was scheduled for December 1972 and should land in the Descartes highlands . During a rescheduling in October 1969, the scientifically attractive but difficult to reach Tycho crater was specified as the landing point for this last planned Apollo mission, as well as the Copernicus crater as an alternative . The launch should not be before February 1973.
But in January 1970, before the Apollo 13 disaster , Apollo 20 was deleted from the program, so that Apollo 19 should now be the provisional end.
One missile too little
The decision to cancel Apollo 20 may also have been made easier by the fact that NASA had one more mission planned than Saturn V rockets were available.
After the successful moon landing of Apollo 11 , NASA had planned nine more moon flights up to Apollo 20, for which nine Saturn V were required.
The Apollo Application Program (AAP), which provided space flights with an expanded profile, had to reduce its planning to a single space station in the summer of 1969. This orbital workshop (OWS), later named Skylab , was supposed to start with a two-stage Saturn V.
Together, these plans required ten more Saturn V rockets, in addition to the six that had already been used in the Apollo program. In contrast, only 15 airworthy rockets with the serial numbers SA-501 to SA-515 were commissioned. As early as August 1968, NASA had the preparatory work for further copies stopped.
When it became clear that NASA's budget would continue to decrease, there was no longer any hope of funding a 16th rocket.
In January 1970 the planning discrepancy was eliminated by canceling Apollo 20. At the same time, NASA stipulated that the first two stages of the SA-513 should put Skylab into orbit.
The third stage of the SA-513 was retained as a replacement for Skylab. It is on display at the Smithsonian today .
Spaceship and lunar module
The planned Apollo spacecraft CSM-116 was still in an early phase of production, so it could still be converted for use in a Skylab mission. This concerned, among other things, the SIM-Bay, which contained various experiments for the lunar orbit in earlier missions, as well as the energy supply of the spaceship. The CSM-116 was finally used for Skylab 2 in May 1973 .
The LM-14 lunar module planned for Apollo 20 is now at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia .
Planned occupation
An occupation was never officially announced, so that one can only speculate about it. The replacement crew from Apollo 17 , which could have justified hopes for a nomination, was not yet assigned at the time of the flight cancellation.
Charles Conrad (sometimes also Stuart Roosa ) or Edgar Mitchell as commander, Paul Weitz as pilot of the command module and Jack Lousma (sometimes also Don Lind ) as lunar shuttle pilot are often named as potential crew today .
Web links
- NASA landing sites for the Last Mission (English)