Kennedy Space Center Apollo 8's lunar orbiting mission. The next two missions tested the Lunar Module: Apollo 9 (Earth orbit) and Apollo 10 (lunar orbit). Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16, 1969, made the first Moon landing on July 20. Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970–1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17. On May 14, 1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A. By this time, the Cape Kennedy pads 34 and 37 used for the Saturn IB were decommissioned, so Pad
International Space Station Space Shuttle to dock to the space station. At that time, the Russian station "Mir" was still inhabited. The ISS remained unmanned for two years, while "Mir" was de-orbited. On 12 July 2000, "Zvezda" was launched into orbit. Preprogrammed commands on board deployed its solar arrays and communications antenna. It then became the passive target for a rendezvous with "Zarya" and "Unity": it maintained a station-keeping orbit while the "Zarya"-"Unity" vehicle performed the rendezvous and docking via ground control and the Russian automated rendezvous and docking system. "Zarya" computer transferred control of the station to "Zvezda" computer soon after docking.