NASA is celebrating the 58th anniversary of the historic Apollo 4 mission, which saw the Saturn V rocket take its first flight. The uncrewed mission lifted off on November 9, 1967 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and ended on the same day, 8 hours and 27 minutes later.
According to NASA, the mission was aimed at testing the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and verify the durability and performance of the spacecraft’s heat shield.
Apollo 4 also tested all three stages of the 363-feet-tall Saturn V that later took 12 men to the Moon between Apollo 11 and Apollo 17. According to NASA, all three stages performed just as desired and pushed the spacecraft beyond 18,000 kilometres altitude in 10 minutes. While orbiting Earth, the spacecraft’s onboard camera took several pictures of our planet pre and post apogee (farthest distance), before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
“The whole world could see the awesome sight of the first launch of what is now the largest rocket ever flown. This launching symbolizes the power this nation is harnessing for the peaceful exploration of space,” then US President Lyndon B. Johnson had said about the mission.
The milestone achieved with Apollo 4 paved the way for first crewed Saturn V launch – Apollo 8 – and restored NASA’s confidence after the Apollo 1 tragedy, which led to the loss of three astronauts in January 1967.
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Fast forward to 2025, NASA is working to get back to the Moon with the Artemis program. Instead of the Saturn V, it is now relying on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket which debuted with the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission on November 16, 2022.
The launch was flawless, somewhat justifying the billions of dollars the US government is spending on its development. Despite the initial success, many industry experts including NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman is against the agency manufacturing its own rockets when private companies are providing launch services at much lower cost and guaranteed success.
Artemis 2, which is targeted for launch in 2026, will also employ the SLS rocket which has faced years long delay in its development and enormous cost overruns. Similar to Apollo 4, Artemis 2 will retest not only the rocket but the Orion spacecraft which launched without humans in 2022, but will carry four astronauts next year. In the previous mission, Orion faced a few hiccups in space including loss of communication and unexpected damage to its heatshield during re-entry.
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