The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F. Kennedy proposed the national goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the 1960s in a May 25, 1961 address to Congress.

Kennedy's goal was accomplished with the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Lunar Module (LM) on the Moon on July 20, 1969 and walked on its surface while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command spacecraft, and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, 12 men walked on the Moon.

Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, following the Mercury and Gemini programs. It used Saturn family rockets as launch vehicles. Apollo / Saturn vehicles were also used for an Apollo Applications program which consisted of three Skylab space station missions in 1973–74, and a joint U.S.–Soviet mission in 1975.

Neil Alden Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is an American former astronaut, test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor, United States Naval Aviator, and the first person to set foot upon the Moon.

Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was in the United States Navy and served in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he flew over 900 flights in a variety of aircraft. As a research pilot, Armstrong served as project pilot on the F-100 Super Sabre A and C variants, F-101 Voodoo, and the Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. He also flew the Bell X-1B, Bell X-5, North American X-15, F-105 Thunderchief, F-106 Delta Dart, B-47 Stratojet, KC-135 Stratotanker, and was one of eight elite pilots involved in the paraglider research vehicle program (Paresev). He graduated from Purdue University and the University of Southern California.

A participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. His first spaceflight was the NASA Gemini 8 mission in 1966, for which he was the command pilot, becoming one of the first U.S. civilians to fly in space.^{[citation needed]} On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2½ hours exploring while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon along with Collins and Aldrin, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

Thomas Ronald Baron (died April 1967) was a quality control and safety inspector for North American Aviation (NAA), the company that built the Apollo command module.

After the Apollo 1 fire Baron wrote a 500 page report on NASA safety protocol violation, which he gave to Rep. Olin E. Teague's investigation at Cape Kennedy, Florida on 21 April 1967. When Baron mentioned the report up during his testimony, Teague told him "Your report went to the chairman of the full committee, not to me", that "something of that length ... we can take it as an exhibit."

No more than eight days after his testimony, Baron was killed instantly, along with his wife and stepdaughter, when a train crashed into their car near their home in Florida. Baron's death was later ruled as an accident, or suicide by some reports.

Thomas Ronald Baron actually wrote two reports. The first, a 55 page report was presented to NASA officials in late 1966,^{[citation needed]} alleging improper actions, and irregularities he had witnessed while working at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). NAA managers met with Baron to address his report, they decided that some of Baron's criticism had merit, but that the rest of his report was inapplicable or unfounded for a variety of reasons. After leaking his report to the media, he was fired. Baron then started to assemble a more thorough report. After the Apollo 1 fire, he delivered this report, containing at least 500 pages, to the Congressional committees investigating the incident. This report disappeared after his death, and has not been found since.^{[citation needed]}