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
Space debris satellite was struck by an unknown object and rendered inoperable; its engineers had enough contact time with the satellite to send it into a graveyard orbit. In 1958, the United States launched Vanguard I into a medium Earth orbit (MEO). , it, and the upper stage of its launch rocket, are the oldest surviving man-made space objects still in orbit. In a catalog of known launches until July 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists listed 902 operational satellites from a known population of 19,000 large objects and about 30,000 objects launched. An example of additional dead satellite debris are the