USS Hornet (CV-12) 27 March 1967. She reached Japan exactly a month later and departed the Sasebo base on 19 May for the war zone. She operated in Vietnamese waters throughout the first half of 1967. "Hornet" recovered the astronauts from the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11, on 24 July 1969. President Nixon was on board to welcome the returning astronauts back to Earth, where they lived in quarantine aboard "Hornet" prior to transfer to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston. The first steps on Earth of returning moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, are marked
Timeline of United States inventions (1946–91) reality with his "google n' gloves" system. 1968 Turtle Excluder Device 1968 Zipper (ride) 1969 Lunar Module The Lunar Module was the lander portion of spacecraft built for the "Apollo program" by Grumman in order to achieve the transit from cislunar orbit to the surface and back. The module was also known as the LM from the manufacturer designation. NASA achieved the first test flight on January 22, 1968 using a Saturn V rocket. Six successful missions carried twelve astronauts, the first being Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969, to the moon surface and safely back home