How did NASA navigate to the Moon?

Apollo astronauts used three navigation systems to determine the proper flight paths to the Moon and back to Earth. An optical navigation system consisted of a scanning telescope and a sextant. With these instruments the astronauts could take star sights and plot the position of their spacecraft.

What is the L1 point?

The L1 point is perhaps the most immediately significant of the Lagrangian points, which were discovered by mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange. It lies 1.5 million kilometres inside the Earth’s orbit, partway between the Sun and the Earth.

What measurements did NASA use to go to the Moon?

When NASA returns astronauts to the Moon, the mission will be measured kilometers, not miles. The agency has decided to use metric units for all operations on the lunar surface, according to a statement released today.

What computer did NASA use to get to the Moon?

Apollo Guidance Computer
Essential to the lunar missions was a now ancient command module computer designed at MIT called the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). The computer used an operating system that allowed astronauts to type in nouns and verbs that were translated into instructions for their spaceship.

Where is L5 in space?

Points L4 and L5, however, are stable, “like a ball in a large bowl,” according to the European Space Agency. These points lie along Earth’s orbit at 60 degrees ahead of and behind Earth, forming the apex of two equilateral triangles that have the large masses (Earth and the sun, for example) as their vertices.

Why is L5 stable?

The L4 and L5 points are home to stable orbits so long as the mass ratio between the two large masses exceeds 24.96. This condition is satisfied for both the Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon systems, and for many other pairs of bodies in the solar system.

What measuring system does NASA use?

the metric system
Although NASA has ostensibly used the metric system since about 1990, English units linger on in much of the U.S. aerospace industry. In practice, this has meant that many missions continue to use English units, and some missions end up using both English and metric units.

What kind of computer is used by NASA?

NASA uses five general-purpose computers in the Shuttle. Each one is an IBM AP-101 central processing unit (CPU) coupled with a custom-built input/output processor (IOP). The AP-101 has the same type of registers and architecture used in the IBM System 360 and throughout the 4Pi series29.