On this day in space on April 4th, 1968
NASA launched the final un crewed test flight of its
Saturn five rocket. The Apollo six mission demonstrated that
the Saturn five rocket and the Apollo spacecraft were ready
to send astronauts into space. On top of the
rocket was the Apollo command and service module and a
boiler plate version of the lunar module. While the
mission did encounter some problems, it was deemed successful
enough for astronauts to be able to fly afterwards.
A few minutes after launch oscillation in some of the
rocket engines caused internal fuel lines to break. This
made some of the engines shut down early. But
the other engines made up for this by burning longer
. The spacecraft ended up in a slightly different orbit
than NASA originally planned. But NASA still called the
mission a success and that's what happened on this day
in space. Yeah.