When NASA awarded the initial Apollo contract to North American Aviation on November 28, 1961, it was still assumed the lunar landing would be achieved by direct ascent rather than by lunar orbit rendezvous. Kennedy announced the Moon landing goal before 1970, which immediately rendered NASA's Olympus Station plans obsolete. industry to propose designs for the vehicle. Later versions would be used on circumlunar flights, and would be the basis for a direct ascent lunar spacecraft as well as used on interplanetary missions. The spacecraft was to service the Project Olympus (LORL), a foldable rotating space station launched on a single Saturn V. They would perform space station-type activities in the module, while later versions would use the module to carry cargo to space stations. It would include a large pressurized auxiliary orbital module where the crew would live and work for weeks at a time. The three-person vehicle was to be mainly for orbital use around Earth. Finally in 1975, the last flown CSM docked with the Soviet craft Soyuz 19 as part of the international Apollo–Soyuz Test Project.Ĭoncepts of an advanced crewed spacecraft started before the Moon landing goal was announced. Following the conclusion of the Apollo program and during 1973–1974, three CSMs ferried astronauts to the orbital Skylab space station. Before these, another four CSMs had flown as uncrewed Apollo tests, of which two were suborbital flights and another two were orbital flights. Of these, nine flew humans to the Moon between 19, and another two performed crewed test flights in low Earth orbit, all as part of the Apollo program. Corrections of the problems which caused the fire were applied to the Block II spacecraft, which was used for all crewed spaceflights. The Apollo 1 flight was cancelled after a cabin fire killed the crew and destroyed their command module during a launch rehearsal test. This, plus other required design changes, led to the decision to design two versions of the CSM: Block I was to be used for uncrewed missions and a single crewed Earth orbit flight ( Apollo 1), while the more advanced Block II was designed for use with the lunar module. It was initially designed to land on the Moon atop a landing rocket stage and return all three astronauts on a direct-ascent mission, which would not use a separate lunar module, and thus had no provisions for docking with another spacecraft. The CSM was developed and built for NASA by North American Aviation starting in November 1961. Just before reentry of the command module on the return home, the umbilical connection was severed and the service module was cast off and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere. An umbilical connection transferred power and consumables between the two modules. It consisted of two parts: the conical command module, a cabin that housed the crew and carried equipment needed for atmospheric reentry and splashdown and the cylindrical service module which provided propulsion, electrical power and storage for various consumables required during a mission. The CSM functioned as a mother ship, which carried a crew of three astronauts and the second Apollo spacecraft, the Apollo Lunar Module, to lunar orbit, and brought the astronauts back to Earth. The Apollo command and service module ( CSM) was one of two principal components of the United States Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 19. Service Propulsion System (Lunar descent assist) Apollo CSM Endeavour in lunar orbit during Apollo 15
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