{"id":507439,"date":"2026-04-01T17:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/507439\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T17:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:21:09","slug":"dorsets-former-nasa-engineer-says-moon-is-stepping-stone-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/507439\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorset&#8217;s former Nasa engineer says Moon is &#8216;stepping stone&#8217; to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wright was previously a systems engineer at Bendix Aerospace, and at Nasa was responsible for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/history\/50-years-ago-first-apollo-lunar-surface-experiment-package-accepted\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was involved in the launch preparation of the experiments that the astronauts put out on the lunar surface,&#8221; he explains.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We were living in Florida right near Kennedy Space Centre.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The scientist even recalls a scene in the Tom Hanks-starring Apollo 13 film that brings back memories of his time at at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;People may remember there was a bit at the beginning where there&#8217;s a young lady being talked to by one of the astronauts at a party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Well that happened to my wife &#8211; Fred Haise who was the lunar module pilot, spent half the evening talking to my wife.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wright was previously a systems engineer at Bendix Aerospace, and at Nasa was responsible for the Apollo Lunar&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-507439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}