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DOCUMENT A (WEBQUEST) : THE CREATION OF NASA

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DOCUMENT A (WEBQUEST) : THE CREATION OF NASA

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Explore and learn about the key events and achievements that shaped almost twenty years of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union

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DOCUMENT B : John FITZGERALD KENNEDY's speech

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DOCUMENT B : John FITZGERALD KENNEDY's speech

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John F. Kennedy: "We choose to go to the moon" speech

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EXTRA John FITZGERALD KENNEDY's biography (video)

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EXTRA John FITZGERALD KENNEDY's biography (video)

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John F. Kennedy: The 35th President of the United States | Biography

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John F. Kennedy | Biography, Siblings, Party, Assassination, & Facts

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John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States (1961–63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially the Cuban missile crisis, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas.

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As World War II was entering its final stages, American and British organizations teamed up to scour occupied Germany for as much military, scientific and technological development research as they could uncover.

Trailing behind Allied combat troops, groups such as the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) began confiscating war-related documents and materials and interrogating scientists as German research facilities were seized by Allied forces. One enlightening discovery-recovered from a toilet at Bonn University-was the Osenberg List: a catalogue of scientists and engineers that had been put to work for the Third Reich.

In a covert affair originally dubbed Operation Overcast but later renamed Operation Paperclip, roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America's behalf during the Cold War. The program was run by the newly-formed Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), whose goal was to harness German intellectual resources to help develop America's arsenal of rockets and other biological and chemical weapons, and to ensure such coveted information did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union.

Although he officially sanctioned the operation, President Harry Truman forbade the agency from recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters. Nevertheless, officials within the JIOA and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)-the forerunner to the CIA-bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists' records, believing their intelligence to be crucial to the country's postwar efforts.

One of the most well-known recruits was Wernher von Braun, the technical director at the Peenemunde Army Research Center in Germany who was instrumental in developing the lethal V-2 rocket that devastated England during the war. Von Braun and other rocket scientists were brought to Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as "War Department Special Employees" to assist the U.S. Army with rocket experimentation. Von Braun later became director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which eventually propelled two dozen American astronauts to the Moon.

Although defenders of the clandestine operation argue that the balance of power could have easily shifted to the Soviet Union during the Cold War if these Nazi scientists were not brought to the United States, opponents point to the ethical cost of ignoring their abhorrent war crimes without punishment or accountability.

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This controversial top-secret U.S. intelligence program brought Nazi German scientists to America to harness their brain power for Cold War initiatives.

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Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

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Wernher von Braun and Operation Paperclip

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How Historians Are Reckoning With the Former Nazi Who Launched America's Space Program

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In Operation Paperclip, German scientists were taken to the U.S. to develop military technology. That work later fed into the space program

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DOCUMENT D : APOLLO 11 ; Landing on the Moon July,20th 1969

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DOCUMENT D : APOLLO 11 ; Landing on the Moon July,20th 1969

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Buzz Aldrin —Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. (1930- ) was born in Montclair, New Jersey, on 20 January 1930. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, entered the United States Air Force, and received pilot training in 1951. Aldrin flew sixty-six combat missions in F-86s in Korea, destroying two MIG-15 aircraft. Known to all as by his nickname, "Buzz," Aldrin was also one of the most important figures in the accomplishment of Project Apollo in successfully landing an American on the Moon in 1960s.

Aldrin became an astronaut during the selection of the third group by NASA in October 1963. On 11 November 1966 he orbited aboard the Gemini XII spacecraft, a 4-day 59-revolution flight that successfully ended the Gemini program. It proved to be a fortuitous selection, for during Project Gemini Aldrin became one of the key figures working on the problem of rendezvous of spacecraft in Earth or lunar orbit, and docking them together for spaceflight. Without these skills Apollo could not have been successfully completed. Aldin, with a Ph.D. in astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was ideally qualified for this work, and his intellectual inclinations ensured that he carried out these tasks with enthusiasm. Systematically and laboriously, Aldrin worked to develop procedures and tools necessary to accomplish space rendezvous and docking. He was also a central figure in devising the methods necessary to carry out extravehicular activities (EVA) of astronauts outside their vehicles. That, too, was critical to the successful accomplishment of Apollo.

Aldrin was chosen as a member of the three-person Apollo 11 crew that landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969, fulfilling the mandate of President John F. Kennedy to send Americans to the Moon before the end of the decade. Aldrin was the second American to set foot on the lunar surface. He and Apollo 11 commander Neil A. Armstrong spent about twenty hours on the Moon before returning to the orbiting Apollo Command Module. The spacecraft and the lunar explorers returned to Earth on 24 July 1969.

In 1971 Aldrin returned to the Air Force and retired a year later. He wrote two important books about his activities in the U.S. space program. In Return to Earth (1970), Aldrin recounted the flight of Apollo 11. In the more broadly constructed Men from Earth (1989), Aldrin discussed the entire space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. He has been an important analyst of the space program since the 1960s. He lives near Los Angeles, California.

Neil Armstrong - Neil Alden Armstrong (1930-2012) was born on 5 August 1930 on his grandparents' farm near Wapakoneta, Ohio, to Stephen and Viola Armstrong. Because Armstrong's father was an auditor for the State of Ohio, Armstrong grew up in several communities, including Warren, Jefferson, Ravenna, St. Marys, and Upper Sandusky, before the family settled in Wapakoneta.

Armstrong developed an interest in flying at only age two when his father took him to the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio. His interest intensified when he went for his first airplane ride in a Ford Tri-Motor, a "Tin Goose," in Warren, Ohio, at age six. From that time on, he claimed an intense fascination with aviation.

At age fifteen, Armstrong began taking flying lessons at an airport north of Wapakoneta, working at various jobs in town and at the airport to earn the money for lessons in an Aeronca Champion airplane. By age sixteen, he had his student pilot's license, before he even passed his automobile driver's test and received that license and before he graduated from Blume High School in Wapakoneta in 1947.

Immediately after high school Armstrong received a scholarship from the U.S. Navy. He enrolled at Purdue University and began his studies of aeronautical engineering. In 1949, the Navy called him to active duty, where he became an aviator, and in 1950, he was sent to Korea. There he flew seventy-eight combat missions from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Essex.

After mustering out of the Navy in 1952, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). His first assignment was at the NACA's Lewis Reserch Center, near Cleveland, Ohio. Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (later NASA's Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, and today the Glenn Research Center) in 1955. For the next seventeen years, he was an engineer, test pilot, astronaut, and administrator for the NACA and its successor agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In the mid-1950s Armstrong transferred to NASA's Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, where he became a research pilot NACA's High-Speed Flight Station (today, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center) at Edwards Air Force Base in California as an aeronautical research scientist and then as a pilot on many pioneering high-speed aircraft, including the well-known, 4,000-mph X-15. He flew over 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters, and gliders. While there he also pursued graduate studies, and received a master of science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California.

Armstrong transferred to astronaut status in 1962, one of nine NASA astronauts in the second class to be chosen. He moved to El Lago, Texas, near Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, to begin his astronaut training. There he underwent four years of intensive training for the Apollo program to land an American on the Moon before the end of the decade.

On 16 March 1966, Armstrong flew his first space mission as command pilot of Gemini VIII with David Scott. During that mission Armstrong piloted the Gemini VIII spacecraft to a successful docking with an Agena target spacecraft already in orbit. While the docking went smoothly and the two craft orbited together, they began to pitch and roll wildly. Armstrong was able to undock the Gemini and used the retro rockets to regain control of his craft, but the astronauts had to make an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean.

As spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first piloted lunar landing mission, Armstrong gained the distinction of being the first person to step on the surface of the Moon. On 16 July 1969, Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin began their trip to the Moon. Collins was the Command Module pilot and navigator for the mission. Aldrin, a systems expert, was the Lunar Module pilot and became the second person to walk on the Moon. As commander of Apollo 11, Armstrong piloted
the Lunar Module to a safe landing on the Moon's surface. On 20 July 1969, at 10:56 p.m. EDT, Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the Moon and made his famous statement, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong and Aldrin spent about two and one-half hours walking on the Moon collecting samples, doing experiments, and taking photographs. On 24 July 1969, the three men splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. They were picked up by the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Hornet.

The three Apollo 11 astronauts were honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City soon after returning to Earth. Armstrong received the Medal of Freedom, the highest award offered to a U.S. civilian. Armstrong's other awards coming in the wake of the Apollo 11 mission included the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, seventeen medals from other countries, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Armstrong subsequently held the position of Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s. In that position, he was responsible for the coordination and management of overall NASA research and technology work related to aeronautics.

After resigning from NASA in 1971, he became a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979. During the years 1982-1992, Armstrong served as chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., in Charlottesville, Virginia. He then became chairman of the board of AIL Systems, Inc., an electronics systems company in Deer Park, New York. Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012 at the age of 82 due to complications relating to recent cardiovascular bypass procedures.

Michael Collins —Michael Collins (1930- ) was born on October 30, 1930, in Rome, Italy. He later moved to Washington, D.C., where he graduated from St. Albans School. In 1952, he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and received his bachelor of science degree.

Prior to joining NASA, Collins served as a fighter pilot and an experimental test pilot at the Air Force Flight Center, Edwards Air Force Base, California. From 1959 to1963 he logged more than 4,200 hours of flying time.

In October 1963, Michael Collins became one of the third group of astronauts named by NASA. He served as a pilot on the three-day Gemini X mission, launched July 18, 1966. During this mission, he set a world altitude record and became the nation's third spacewalker while completing two extravehicular activities (EVA).

His second flight was as Command Module pilot of the historic Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. He remained in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon. His role in the Apollo mission earned him many awards and accolades, including the Presidential Medal for Freedom in 1969.

In January 1970, Collins left NASA to become the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. A year later he joined the Smithsonian Institution as the Director of the National Air and Space Museum, where he remained for seven years. While in this position, he was responsible for the construction of the new museum building, which opened to the public in July 1976, ahead of schedule and below its budgeted cost. In April 1978, Collins became Under Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1980, he became the Vice President of the LTV Aerospace and Defense Company, resigning in 1985 to start his own firm.

Collins has completed two spaceflights, logging 266 hours in space, of which 1 hour and 27 minutes was spent in EVA. He has written about his experiences in the space program in several books, including Carrying the Fire and Flying to the Moon and other Strange Places. In 1988, he wrote Liftoff: the Story of America's Adventure in Space. Today he is an aerospace consultant and writer.

Born October 17, 1933, in Hong Kong.

Bachelor of science in nuclear engineering from U.S. Naval Academy; master of science in nuclear engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology.

Flew on Apollo 8.

Born March 15, 1932, in Wheeler, Texas.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from University of Texas.

Flew on Apollo 12 and Skylab 3.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 1,671.

Born March 14, 1928, in Gary, Indiana.

Bachelor of science from U.S. Military Academy; master of science in aeronautical engineering from California Institute of Technology.

Flew on Gemini VII and Apollo 8.

Born February 15, 1935, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University.

Born March 14, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois.

Bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Purdue University; master of science in aeronautical engineering from U.S. Navy Postgraduate School.

Flew on Gemini IX, Apollo 10, and Apollo 17.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 566.

Born June 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University.

Flew on Gemini V, Gemini XI, Apollo 12, and Skylab 2.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 1,179.

Born March 16, 1932, in Creston, Iowa.

Bachelor and master of arts in physics from University of California at Los Angeles; Advanced Management Program, Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Flew on Apollo 7.

Born October 3, 1935, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bachelor of science in naval sciences from U.S. Naval Academy; master of science in aeronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Flew on Apollo 16.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 265.

Born June 23, 1930, in Columbus, Ohio.

Bachelor of science in astronautics from U.S. Naval Academy; master of science in astronautics from U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology.

Flew on Apollo 7.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 260.

Born November 10, 1933, in St. Francis, Kansas.

Bachelor of science in electrical engineering from University of Kansas; master of science in aeronautical engineering from U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

Flew on Apollo 17.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 301.

Cumulative EVA time is more than 1 hour.

Born October 5, 1929, in Seattle, Washington.

Bachelor of science in chemistry from University of Washington; honorary doctorate of science from Niagara University.

Flew on Gemini XI and Apollo 12.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 315.

Gus Grissom—Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom (1927-1967) was chosen with the first group of astronauts in 1959. He was the pilot for the 1961 Mercury-Redstone 4 ( Liberty Bell 7) mission, a suborbital flight; command pilot for Gemini 3; backup command pilot for Gemini VI; and had been selected as commander of the first Apollo flight at the time of his death in the Apollo 204 fire on 27 January 1967. Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 5.

Fred Haise —HAISE, Fred W., Jr., Civilian

Born November 14, 1933, in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from University of Oklahoma.

Flew on Apollo 13 and Space Shuttle approach and landing tests 1, 3, and 5.

Born March 17, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Bachelor of science in naval science from U.S. Naval Academy; master of science in aeronautical engineering and instrumentation engineering from University of Michigan.

Flew on Apollo 15.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 295.

Cumulative EVA time is more than 18 hours.

Born March 25, 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Bachelor of science from U.S. Naval Academy; Advanced Management Program, Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Flew on Gemini VII, Gemini XII, Apollo 8, and Apollo 13.

Born March 17, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from Auburn University.

Flew on Apollo 16, STS-4, and STS 51-C.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 508.

Born June 10, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from University of Michigan.

Flew on Gemini IV and Apollo 9, and was the Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager.

Born September 17, 1930, in Hereford, Texas.

Bachelor of science in industrial management from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University); bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from U.S. Naval Postgraduate School; doctorate of science in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Flew on Apollo 14.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 216.

Born August 16, 1933, in Durango, Colorado.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from University of Colorado.

Flew on Apollo 14.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 216.

Born March 12, 1923, in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Bachelor of science from U.S. Naval Academy; graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School.

Flew on Mercury 8, Gemini VI, and Apollo 7.

Born July 3, 1935, in Santa Rita, New Mexico.

Bachelor of science in geology from California Institute of Technology; doctorate of philosophy in geology from Harvard University.

Flew on Apollo 17.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 301.

Russell Schweikart —SCHWEICKART, Russell L.,Civilian

Born October 25, 1935 in Neptune, New Jersey.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; master of science in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Flew on Apollo 9.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 241.

Born June 6, 1932, in San Antonio, Texas.

Bachelor of science from U.S. Military Academy; master of science in aeronautics and astronautics and engineer in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Flew on Gemini VIII, Apollo 9, and Apollo 15.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 546.

Alan Shepard—Alan B. Shepard, Jr. (1923-1998) was born November 18, 1923, in East Derry, New Hampshire. He received a bachelor of science degree from the U.S. Naval Academy. Shepard was a member of the first group of seven astronauts in 1959 chosen to participate in Project Mercury. He became the first American in space, with a suborbital flight aboard his Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft on 5 May 1961. He also commanded Apollo 14 in 1971, when he landed on the Moon. His cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 216 and cumulative EVA time is more than 9 hours.

Born September 17, 1930, in Weatherford, Oklahoma.

Bachelor of science from U.S. Naval Academy.

Flew on Gemini VI, Gemini IX, Apollo 10, and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Born August 30, 1931, in Denver, Colorado.

Bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from University of Colorado; master of science in aerospace science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; master of business administration from Hartford College.

Flew on Apollo 13.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 142.

Born November 14, 1930, in San Antonio, Texas.

Bachelor of science from U.S. Military Academy; master of science in aeronautical engineering from University of Michigan.

Flew on Gemini IV.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 97.

Cumulative EVA time is more than 23 minutes.

Born February 7, 1932, in Jackson, Michigan.

Bachelor of science in military science from U.S. Military Academy; master of science in astronautical and aeronautical engineering and instrumentation engineering from University of Michigan.

Flew on Apollo 15.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 295.

Born September 24, 1930, in San Francisco, California.

Bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Flew on Gemini 3, Gemini X, Apollo 10, Apollo 16, STS-1, and STS-9.

Cumulative hours of spaceflight are more than 835.

Cumulative EVA time is more than 20 hours (on the Moon).

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Buzz Aldrin -Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. (1930- ) was born in Montclair, New Jersey, on 20 January 1930. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, entered the United States Air Force, and received pilot training in 1951. Aldrin flew sixty-six combat missions in F-86s in Korea, destroying two MIG-15 aircraft.

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Neil Armstrong - First Moon Landing 1969

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DOCUMENT E : The Space Race and the Civil Rights Movement Context

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DOCUMENT E : The Space Race and the Civil Rights Movement Context

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The date was 15 July 1969. As the Saturn V rocket towered over the launchpad, about to send the first men to the moon, two dozen black families from poor parts of the south, accompanied by mules and wagons emblematic of the civil rights movement, marched to the fence of Cape Kennedy in Florida. From a bird's eye view, they would have resembled dwarves in the wake of a colossus.They were led by Ralph Abernathy, successor to the slain Martin Luther King as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He carried a sign that said bluntly: "$12 a day to feed an astronaut. We could feed a starving child for $8." He told a rally at the site: "We may go on from this day to Mars and to Jupiter and even to the heavens beyond, but as long as racism, poverty and hunger and war prevail on the Earth, we as a civilised nation have failed."The Apollo 11 mission has been hailed as humankind's greatest technological achievement and, after the turmoil of the 1960s, a redemptive moment of national and international unity. Speaking to astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface in what he described as "the most historic telephone call ever made", President Richard Nixon declared: "For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one."Yet it was myth making then and will be again as America commemorates this month's 50th anniversary with events, exhibitions and TV specials. The Apollo programme, motivated by the space race against the Soviet Union, cost $25.4bn, the equivalent of $180bn today; only the Vietnam war hit taxpayers harder. While Nasa warned Congress "No bucks, no Buck Rogers", polls showed a majority of Americans opposed the "moondoggle".

The black press questioned how the price tag could be justified when millions of African Americans were still mired in poverty. Testifying to the US Senate on race and urban poverty in 1966, King had observed "in a few years we can be assured that we will set a man on the moon and with an adequate telescope he will be able to see the slums on Earth with their intensified congestion, decay and turbulence".

'An inhuman priority'

The protest march on the eve of Apollo 11's launch opened a new chapter in the poor people's campaign, which had built a makeshift city at the National Mall in Washington a year earlier.

Tom Paine, the administrator of Nasa, walked out to meet the demonstrators. An official Nasa history recalls: "Paine stood coatless under a cloudy sky, accompanied only by Nasa's press officer, as Abernathy approached with his party, marching slowly and singing We Shall Overcome.

"Several mules were in the lead, as symbols of rural poverty. Abernathy then gave a short speech. He deplored the condition of the nation's poor, declaring that one-fifth of the nation lacked adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical care. In the face of such suffering, he asserted that space flight represented an inhuman priority. He urged that its funds be spent to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the sick and house the homeless.

"Paine replied that 'if we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button'. He added that Nasa's technical advances were 'child's play' compared to 'the tremendously difficult human problems' that concerned the SCLC. He offered the hope that Nasa indeed might contribute to addressing these problems, and then asked Abernathy, a minister, to pray for the safety of the astronauts. Abernathy answered with emotion that he would certainly do this, and they ended this impromptu meeting by shaking hands all around."

Among the protesters at Cape Kennedy (now know as Cape Canaveral) that day was JT Johnson, a civil rights activist who had been with King in Memphis shortly before he died and became a close aide to Abernathy. "They didn't want you too close to where it was launching, so we just picked us a spot and decided to have us a rally and started talking and singing - the songs brought us through these difficult times - and we just did what we do," Johnson recalled in an interview at his home in a suburb of Atlanta.

"At that time, the whole movement was around poverty and poor people so that's all we talked about: how poor we are and how is this thing going to the moon and spending millions when we don't have any and some people don't have a place to live or food to eat, but we still allow all of these things to happen. That was the real protest: billions for the moon and pennies for the poor."

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JT Johnson at his home in Atlanta, Georgia. Photograph: Lynsey Weatherspoon/The Guardian

A project of white America

Johnson is now an 81-year-old grandfather. He's still politically active and hopes to tell more about the story of the civil rights movement. Wearing a blue T-shirt in his red dining room, he recalled growing up during the era of Jim Crow segregation in Montezuma, Georgia.

"It had a big water fountain downtown with a 'colored' sign and a 'white' sign when all the water was coming from the same place," he said. "As a child I couldn't understand because most of these things didn't seem fair to me. So the Lord knew that I was going to be in the movement before I did, because I didn't know it and some of the things I just didn't like. It wasn't fair."

As for so many, King became his lodestar. "When I met Dr King, I thought that was the man I'd been waiting to see for all of my life and I dedicated myself to the civil rights movement."

In one protest in the 1960s, Johnson and others jumped into a whites-only swimming pool in St Augustine, Florida, only for the hotel owner to pour acid into the pool. After trying to integrate another swimming pool in Albany, Georgia, he was imprisoned for six days and went on hunger strike. In this context, President John F Kennedy's dream of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed a luxury that America could not afford.

"I think it was all about PR really for the United States and Russia," he said. "I think this country has never really taken care of people here ... African Americans never got their share; they spread it around everybody else."

Indeed, the Apollo programme gave every impression of being a project of white America. As footage of the era is replayed to mark the semicentennial, it is striking that all 12 people who walked on the moon were white men, and so too the overwhelming majority of officials, engineers and scientists at mission control. The musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron's Whitey on the Moon summed up: "A rat done bit my sister Nell / With Whitey on the moon / Her face and arms began to swell / And Whitey's on the moon."

Johnson said: "We didn't hear an invitation; we didn't get anything. So we thought that was a disgrace and a disrespect to all of us ... It was white people that was privileged in this country and they'd made it like that for themselves."

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Vice-President Spiro Agnew and former president Lyndon Johnson view the liftoff of Apollo 11 from the Kennedy Space Center VIP viewing site. Photograph: Nasa/Getty Images

'A proud American'

Johnson did not linger at Cape Kennedy to witness the epic Saturn V rocket launch. But like spellbound millions around the world, he did watch on TV when Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. He recalled: "I guess it was exciting to see that happen, to be very frank with you, but here again the next day we were going back to the same thing. How do we feed our hungry?"

Others, however, felt differently. Abernathy did stay to watch the launch in person. A college professor and maths teacher, he was not opposed to Apollo per se, but rather "the nation's distorted sense of national priorities".

His daughter, Donzaleigh, who was an 11-year-old girl at the time, said by phone: "He wanted to bring attention to the fact that we're spending billions to send men to the moon yet we cannot feed hungry children in America. By doing this my father also brought the attention of members of Congress to the issue of hunger and poverty.

"It ended up being a win-win situation all way around: my dad said he felt like a really proud American and that, for just a moment when that rocket launched into space, it wasn't about hunger, it wasn't about poverty, it was about an accomplishment of human beings to go forth. And that's miraculous within itself."

Donzaleigh, an actor who appeared alongside Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in the drama Suits, shares her father's ultimately positive view of space exploration. "I don't believe that it would be right or fair to say no ... I think that would be counterproductive to the greater good of humanity.

"However, you cannot do that singularly and not look back at those who are in front of your face every single day who are starving, who are wallowing in poverty."

Nasa's 'spin-offs'

Donzaleigh recalled that Abernathy had a vivid impact on the Nasa scientists, inspiring them to use technology to tackle pressing domestic needs such as air and water pollution. "Scientists do have an ability to impact our world in a positive way and they did that and I'm just so glad that the scientists listened," she said.

According to Neil Maher, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, although Nasa never stated publicly that Abernathy's protest pressured it to address the poverty of African Americans, it began taking steps to address those problems soon after.

"In 1972 the space agency created an Urban Systems Project Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which retooled technologies deployed for Apollo for use instead in America's inner cities," Maher, author of Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, said via email. "Such 'spin-offs' included water filtration systems, air pollution monitoring technologies, and even energy efficient heating and cooling systems from the Apollo space capsule for use instead in low-income housing projects.

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'Whitey's on the moon': why Apollo 11 looked so different to black America

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The date was 15 July 1969. As the Saturn V rocket towered over the launchpad, about to send the first men to the moon, two dozen black families from poor parts of the south, accompanied by mules and wagons emblematic of the civil rights movement, marched to the fence of Cape Kennedy in Florida.

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DOCUMENT F : Katherine GOBLE JOHNSON biography

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DOCUMENT F : Katherine GOBLE JOHNSON biography

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Born: Aug. 26, 1918
Died: Feb. 24, 2020
Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV
Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937
Hired by NACA: June 1953
Retired from NASA: 1986
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson
Biography by Margot Lee Shetterly
Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia's graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life's most notable moments, but it's just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson's long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At 18, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school's math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in mathematics. She graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State's president, Dr. John W. Davis, selected her and two men to be the first black students offered spots at the state's flagship school, West Virginia University. She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her first husband, James Goble. She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn't until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NACA's) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband decided to move the family to Newport News, Virginia, to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into her tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine's temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history-and Johnson's life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA's first official foray into space travel. Johnson, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, "came along with the program" as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America's first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn's Friendship 7 mission from liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to "get the girl"-Johnson-to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. "If she says they're good,'" Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, "then I'm ready to go." Glenn's flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Johnson would talk about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo's Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS, later renamed Landsat) and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. "I loved going to work every single day," she said. In 2015, at age 97, Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor.

She died on Feb. 24, 2020. NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said, "Our NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson passed away this morning at 101 years old. She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."

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Hidden Figures(2016) No more colored bathroom,no more white bathroom

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Conspiracy theory 2: Apollo astronauts could not have survived Earth's radiation field

Earth is surrounded by a zone of charged particles known as the 'Van Allen' radiation belt.

"These are regions surrounding the Earth in our magnetic field where high energy trapped particles from the Sun tend to get confined," Prof Ojha says. "What that means is if you are going into these regions, there are extremely high radiation concerns."

If that is the case, how did the Apollo astronauts travel through the Van Allen radiation belt and out of Earth's orbit unharmed? Surely the amount of radiation would have killed them? Doesn't this prove that the Moon landings were a hoax?

Prof Ojha has a killer reply.

"My answer to that is... firewalking," he says.

"If you've ever done firewalking, you'll know the one thing you don't do is linger around in the middle of the firepit. You cross as quickly as you can. From a science point of view, as long as you walk across quite quickly, looking at the thermal conductivity of your feet, you are not going to have enough thermal energy going into the soles of your feet to burn you. You're absolutely fine. Just don't hang around in the middle!

"In a similar way, the transit time through the Van Allen radiation belt right at the beginning of the Apollo voyages was incredibly short. Travelling through the Van Allen radiation belt if you are going fast enough - which you need to be if you're going to the Moon - is no problem whatsoever."

Conspiracy status: debunked

Conspiracy theory 3: why are there no stars in pictures of the NASA Moon landings?

Here is another Moon landing photograph which has caught conspiracy theorists' eye.

Buzz Aldrin carries experiment equipment during the Apollo 11 Moon landing (NASA)

If the image really was taken on the Moon, shouldn't the sky be filled with stars? After all, there is no atmosphere to distort the image, no clouds to interrupt that glorious view.

Conspiracy theorists argue that the lack of stars in the Apollo 11 mission photographs prove that the event was staged. NASA could not have faked the full wonder of the lunar sky, and so they simply chose not to include any stars at all.

Here's another solution: both the astronauts and the lunar landscape itself are brightly lit by the Sun. The sky may look black, but remember, this is in fact daytime on the Moon.

If you're going to take a photo of a brightly lit scene, your camera's shutter speed needs to be fast and your aperture incredibly small. In that situation, faint objects like stars simply aren't going to show up.

Conspiracy status: debunked

Conspiracy theory 4: the Apollo 11 US flag is waving in the wind... but there's no wind on the Moon

"One of the crowning moments in terms of US national pride was seeing the Stars and Stripes on the surface of the Moon," Prof Ojha says.

Buzz Aldrin salutes the US flag during the Apollo 11 Moon landing (NASA)

Buzz Aldrin saluting the proudly waving American flag on the Moon remains one of the iconic images of the Apollo 11 mission, a declaration of US supremacy over space race rivals the Soviet Union.

But if there is no atmosphere on the Moon, there is no wind - so why is the flag waving? Is this the proof that conspiracy theorists have been seeking?

Look again at the image, and in particular along the top edge of the flag, and you will find the answer. A telescopic pole has been extended along the top in order to make the flag fly proudly (yes, NASA really did think of everything).

"Because it's been set up like this, it appears to be waving in the wind," Ojha explains. "All the wrinkles are there because it's literally been screwed up for four days en route to the Moon."

Conspiracy status: debunked

Conspiracy theory 5: if we really went to the Moon in 1969, why have we never been back?

Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon, took place in 1972. Since then, humans have never returned.

Maybe that's because we never went to the Moon in the first place?

Apollo 17 wasn't meant to be the end of the story, of course. Throughout the 1970s there were ambitions to establish a permanent lunar base before turning to the next major space exploration challenge: Mars.

It never happened. But this was no grand conspiracy; this was geopolitics.

"The answer is we changed our priorities," Ojha says. "From a combination of the Vietnam War, but also there was this geopolitical element of thinking, 'We've won the race'. Just as we'd got good at doing science on the Moon, we abandoned it."

Instead, attention turned to the Space Shuttle programme and, latterly, the International Space Station, which has been permanently inhabited by teams of astronauts since November 2000. But that doesn't mean humans couldn't return to the Moon in the future...

Conspiracy status: debunked

Apollo 11 50 years on: leaving our mark on the Moon

The Moon landings were not a hoax. Apollo 11 did happen. Humans really did set foot on the Moon.

We have countless images, videos, lunar samples and scientific data to prove it. But more than that, human exploration has literally left its mark on the Moon's surface.

"In 2009 we sent a lunar reconnaissance orbiter to map the lunar surface in three or four orders of magnitude more resolution than had ever been managed before," Prof Ojha says. "Every single Apollo landing site was pictured. Absolutely stunning.

"What really strikes me about these images is that those footprints, those tracks of the lunar vehicles - they're going to maintain their integrity for millions of years," he says. "No matter what we do to ourselves as a civilisation, we've really left our mark on the cosmos."

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Moon landing conspiracy theories, debunked

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The Moon landings were faked. Apollo 11 didn't happen. Humans never set foot on the Moon. Heard all this before?

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DOCUMENT G : Elon Musk's projects... Mars !

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DOCUMENT G : Elon Musk's projects... Mars !

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Stephen Petranek: Your kids might live on Mars. Here's how they'll survive

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It sounds like science fiction, but journalist Stephen Petranek considers it fact: within 20 years, humans will live on Mars. In this provocative talk, Petranek makes the case that humans will become a spacefaring species and describes in fascinating detail how we'll make Mars our next home.

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