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
Andover Earth Station Since the satellite was not in a geosynchronous orbit like modern communication satellites, it passed overhead quickly, and the giant antenna had to be precisely steerable to track the satellite as it moved across the sky. Telstar was launched on July 10, 1962 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and went into orbit at 4:46 a.m. The engineers at the Andover Earth Station would have to wait 15 hours for the satellite, travelling at a rate of 5 miles per second (8 km/s), 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above the earth to reach within their "view". The engineers successfully sent