Apollo 11 Cleared For Lift-Off

Today was a pretty cool day. In Science this week, we've been learning about the moon, various missions to the moon, astronauts, space and other interesting stuff. So today, as our science project, we built a spaceship and re-enacted Apollo 11's mission to the moon. I'll let the photos tell you the story!

As I've never added photos to my blog, I still haven't figured out how the captions work. So here is what's going on:

1. Getting ready to launch.
2. Interior view of rocket. Astronaut's seat and wing controls which actually can move the wings (albeit only certain directions).
3. Interior view of control panel on front.
4. Waiting impatiently for Mission Control (mommy) to authorize launch.
5. Waiting for countdown.
6. Hatch lowered and countdown begun. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 BLASTOFF!
7. Mid-flight in space.
8. Having landed safely on the moon, our astronaut is planting the American flag on the surface.
9. Sorry about the blurriness, our astronaut is demonstrating for Mission Control's benefit, the standard of gravity on the moon. Each step is like a large giant bounce.
10. Back in the spacecraft and homeward bound, our astronaut is talking to Mission Control to execute a safe landing.

P.S. If you carefully look, you'll notice the hatch was replaced while ON the moon. The first hatch (blue laundry basket) kept falling in and beaning our astronaut on the head. So, during the mission, repairs were made and a new, better quality hatch (green laundry basket) was installed. Generally, it is a good idea to keep your astronaut conscious until he returns to earth!

What a great way to have science AND history class!

From Mission Control:
Over and Out!