John F. Kennedy unveiled Project Apollo before Congress on May 25, 1961 in a speech on "Urgent National Needs," billed as a second State of the Union message. He asked for support to accomplish four basic goals in space exploration, only the Lunar landing is usually remembered. He also asked for congressional appropriations for weather satellites, communications satellites, and the Rover nuclear propulsion rocket. Congress agreed to all of them with barely any comment. Kennedy's basis for this request to begin a full fledge space program was rooted in the cold war rivalry with the Soviet Union.
The first multispectral photography from space took place during the 1968 Apollo 9 mission. Four Hasselblad cameras were mounted in a frame that the crew could hold, the trigger was rigged to all four cameras so they would all expose at the same time. The multispectral imagers acquired during this mission were digitized abd used in the development of Landsat, which was launched 4 years later.
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