History
The first space probe to successfully perform TLI was the Soviet Union's Luna 1 on January 2, 1959. The first human-crewed mission to successfully perform this procedure, and thus becoming the first humans to leave the Earth's influence, was Apollo 8 on December 21, 1968.
For the Apollo lunar missions, the restartable J-2 engine in the third (S-IVB) stage of the Saturn V rocket performed TLI. This particular TLI burn lasted approximately 350 seconds, providing 3.05 to 3.25 km/s (10,000 to 10,600 ft/s) of delta-v, at which point the spacecraft was traveling at approximately 10.4 km/s (34150 ft/s) relative to the Earth. The Apollo 8 TLI was spectacularly observed from the Hawaiian Islands in the pre-dawn sky south of Waikiki, photographed and reported in the papers the next day. In 1969, the Apollo 10 pre-dawn TLI was visible from Cloncurry, Australia. It was described as resembling car headlights coming over a hill in fog, with the spacecraft appearing as a bright comet with a greenish tinge.
Read more about this topic: Trans-lunar Injection
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)