On this day in space: April 4, 1968: Apollo 6 launches final uncrewed Saturn V rocket test flight

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On April 4, 1968, NASA launched the final uncrewed test flight of its Saturn V rocket.

On April 4, 1968, NASA launched the final uncrewed test flight of its Saturn V rocket. The Apollo 6 mission demonstrated that the Saturn V rocket and Apollo spacecraft were ready to send astronauts into space.

a black and white rocket generates a bright and wide plume as it lifts off from a launch pad next to a red support tower

NASA launches Apollo 6, the final uncrewed test flight of its Saturn V rocket, on April 4, 1968. (Image credit: NASA)

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.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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