{"id":879208,"date":"2026-10-12T02:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T02:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879208\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T02:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T02:48:09","slug":"oct-11-1968-apollo-7-launches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879208\/","title":{"rendered":"Oct. 11, 1968: Apollo 7 launches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tToday in the history of astronomy, American return to space for the first time after the tragedy of Apollo 1.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"470\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Apollo7crew.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"A color photograph shows three smiling men wearing white spacesuits adorned with patches and American flag emblems, posing closely together inside a white spacecraft interior. The suit details, including blue and red metallic connectors, stand out brightly under clear, even indoor lighting. An open hatch door with metallic mechanical components frames the left side of the background.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe crew of Apollo 7, from left to right: Command Module pilot Don F. Eisele, Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Lunar Module pilot Walter Cunningham. Credit: NASA\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twenty-one months after the deaths of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/today-in-the-history-of-astronomy\/jan-27-1967-the-apollo-1-fire\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apollo 1 <\/a>crew in a fire during a test on the launchpad, the three men who had originally served as their backup crew \u2014 Walter Schirra Jr., Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham \u2014 flew on Apollo 7. The first manned American spaceflight since the accident, their mission was a resounding success, speeding the Apollo program ahead to reach the Moon by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apollo 7 launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, Oct. 11, 1968. Onboard was a three-man crew of commander (Schirra), command module pilot (Eisele), and lunar module pilot (Cunningham). They remained in orbit for 10 days 20 hours before splashing down Oct. 22. The mission aimed to achieve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/space-exploration\/apollo-7-nasas-first-mini-mutiny-in-space\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">several key objectives<\/a>, including the demonstration of successful crew, mission support, and spacecraft capabilities in preparation for manned missions to the Moon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe were very pleased to be making the flight,\u201d Cunningham told Astronomy in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/space-exploration\/apollo-7-50-years-ago\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2018 interview for the 50th anniversary<\/a> of the mission. \u201cThe general public at large was excited and kind of filled with tenseness over the fact that the last one had been a fatal accident. But we spent that 21 months getting about 1,060 changes in the spacecraft. Our crew was responsible for some of them, the engineers were responsible for most of them, and were all working together, looking forward to getting back on schedule and landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out, because that was the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alison Klesman\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine.\u00a0She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Today in the history of astronomy, American return to space for the first time&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71447,79,193],"class_list":["post-879208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}