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The Apollo program included both manned and unmanned space missions, flown by NASA between 1961 and 1975. They culminated with a series of manned Moon landings between 1969 and 1972.
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Launch vehicles
The Apollo program used four types of launch vehicles:
The Marshall Space Flight Center, which designed the Saturn rockets, referred to the flights as Saturn-Apollo (SA), while Kennedy Space Center referred to the flights as Apollo-Saturn (AS). This is why the unmanned Saturn 1 flights are referred to as SA and the unmanned Saturn 1B are referred to as AS. Dates given below are dates of launch.
Unmanned missions
From 1961 to 1968, the Saturn launch vehicles and components of the Apollo spacecraft were tested in unmanned flights.
Launch escape system (LES) tests
From August 1963 to January 1966 a number of tests were conducted for development of the launch escape system (LES). These included simulated pad aborts, which might occur while the Apollo-Saturn space vehicle was still on the launch pad, and flights on the Little Joe II rocket to simulate Mode I aborts which might occur while the vehicle was in the air.
Unmanned Apollo-Saturn IB and Saturn V
Some incongruity in the numbering and naming of the first three unmanned Apollo-Saturn (AS), or Apollo flights, is due to the posthumous honorary renaming of the flight which would have been AS-204, to Apollo 1. This manned flight was to have followed the first three unmanned flights. After the fire which killed the AS-204 crew on the pad during a test and training exercise, unmanned Apollo flights resumed to test the Saturn V launch vehicle and the Lunar Module; these were designated Apollo 4, 5 and 6. The first manned Apollo mission was thus Apollo 7. Simple "Apollo" numbers were never assigned to the first three unmanned flights, although renaming AS-201, AS-202 and AS-203 as Apollo 1-A, Apollo 2 and Apollo 3, had been briefly considered.
Manned Apollo missions
Block I crew positions for Apollo 1 were designated Command Pilot, Senior Pilot, and Pilot. Corresponding Block II positions were designated Commander, Command Module Pilot, and Lunar Module Pilot (regardless of whether or not a Lunar Module was present on the mission.)
A total of fifteen Saturn V vehicles were ordered (through AS-515), which would have been enough for three more Moon landing missions through Apollo 20. This flight was cancelled during the first Apollo 11 landing mission, to make the launch vehicle available for the Skylab space station. Shortly thereafter, Apollo 18 and 19 were cancelled in response to Congressional cuts in NASA's budget.
Several of the missions involved extravehicular activity (EVA), "space walks" or "Moon walks" outside of the spacecraft. These were of three types: testing the lunar EVA suit in Earth orbit (Apollo 9), exploring the lunar surface, and retrieving film canisters from the Scientific Instrument Module stored in the Service Module.