At 9:32 a.m. EDT, Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission,
was launched on a historic journey to the surface of the moon.

After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into
a lunar orbit on July 19.

From left: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the Apollo 11 crew.

On June 3, 1965, Ed White became the first American to walk in
space when he ventured outside the Gemini capsule into the
vacuum of the cosmos. He was among NASA’s Astronaut Group
2, an elite group of nine astronauts selected for the Gemini
program.  (Space)

Edward Higgins White II
(November 14, 1930 – January 27, 1967)

With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar
spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey
to the moon, safely returns to Earth on April 17, 1970.

On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was
launched from Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell,
John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise. The mission was headed f
or a landing on the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon. However,
two days into the mission, disaster struck 200,000 miles from
Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up in the spacecraft.

From Top Left: Alan B. Shepard, Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, L.
Gordon Cooper
Bottom Left: Wally Schirra, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, John
Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

The seven men, all military test pilots, were carefully selected from
a group of 32 candidates to take part in Project Mercury, America’s
first manned space program. NASA planned to begin manned orbital flights in 1961.

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Herschel Glenn Jr. was
successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7
spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut
on this day in 1962.

Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was
among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become
America’s first astronauts.