Apollo Lander (1961 Concept)

Mission Profile

Apollo Lander (1961 Concept) represents the earliest conceptual designs for a crewed lunar landing vehicle, studied in 1961 before NASA had committed to any specific mission architecture for reaching the Moon. These early concepts ranged from direct-ascent vehicles requiring a massive single rocket to lift astronauts directly from Earth to the lunar surface and back, to early orbital rendezvous proposals using separate lunar landers. The 1961 studies were part of the intensive planning activity that followed President Kennedy's May 1961 commitment to land Americans on the Moon, culminating in the selection of lunar orbit rendezvous as the mission architecture in 1962 and the subsequent development of the Apollo Lunar Module.