Nasa S Jpl And The Space Age Destination Moon We Didn T Know What We Were Doing

The laboratory, having built and helped launch the first U.S. satellite into space, wanted to explore not only the moon, but nearby planets. But as this hour-long episode documents, JPL would be humbled by a string of failures that threatened the lab’s very future. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” one veteran JPL engineer confides in the program, “and there was no one around to tell us.” Ironically, a successful (although barely so) flyby of Venus by Mariner 2 would give the United States its first “First in Space.” And after finally succeeding with its Ranger program, JPL would go on to manage the highly successful Surveyor missions that soft landed on the moon, serving as pathfinders for the Apollo astronauts. Destination Moon relives JPL’s struggles and triumphs at the moon and Venus. Destination Moon is Episode 3 in the documentary series “JPL and the Space Age.” JPL and the Space Age Video Series

Episode 1: The American RocketeerEpisode 2: Explorer 1Episode 3: Destination MoonEpisode 4: The Changing Face of MarsEpisode 5: The Stuff of DreamsEpisode 6: The Footsteps of VoyagerEpisode 7: To the Rescue