President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally ride in a limousine moments before Kennedy was assassinated, in Dallas, Texas November 22, 1963. Walt Cisco/Dallas Morning News/Handout/File Photo via REUTERS

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 4:56 PM PT – Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Today marks 53 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States. He was a Massachusetts native who grew up to be the youngest man elected to the highest office in the United States. He was a Navy veteran and a Democrat.

President Kennedy is best known for founding the Peace Corps, advancing the space program to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and for working with Martin Luther King Jr. to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1963, he was spending the better part of November planning his bid for re-election.

On November 22nd, the president was traveling from Fort Worth, Texas to Dallas, Texas with the First Lady Jackie Kennedy. It was their first public appearance together since the death of their son Patrick in August. Political tensions were already high in Dallas, as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. at the time had been physically attacked during a speech a month earlier.

Nevertheless, the Kennedy’s began the ten-mile route in the presidential motorcade with the top down. Kennedy was scheduled to speak at the Trade Mart for a luncheon. But around 12:30 pm the car turned off the main street at Dealey Plaza and the sound of gun shots rang out.

The president was hit in the head, neck and chest. He was rushed to the Parkland Memorial Hospital.
A catholic priest came to administer his last rites. John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 pm.

Meanwhile, police had arrested an employee at the Texas School Book Depository named Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was a former Marine who attempted suicide when Moscow initially rejected his application for citizenship. He eventually defected to the Soviet Union sometime in 1959. He returned to the United States with his wife in 1962.

By the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald was already known for the attempted assassination of Army General Edwin Walker seven months earlier.

On November 24th, Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from police headquarters to a county jail when him and officers were swarmed my television crews and reporters.

Amid the confusion, local club owner Jack Ruby shot Oswald at point blank range on national television. Oswald died two days later in the same hospital the president died in.

250,000 people traveled to the Capitol Rotunda to pay their respects to President Kennedy before he was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

In the midst of the tragedy and chaos, President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn into office while on Air Force One. He would eventually go on to carry on the legacy of Kennedy’s fight for civil rights.

This handout from NASA TV shows NASA’s Orion spacecraft approaching the moon on Monday, Nov. 21, 2022. (NASA via AP)

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 3:37 PM PT – Tuesday, November 22, 2022

NASA’s Orion made its closest lunar approach for the first time in 50-years as part of the Artemis 1 mission. The mission aims to return astronauts to the moon. No one has visited the lunar surface since 1972.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration live broadcast, the spacecraft passed about 81-miles above the lunar surface on Monday. Orion will now be entering what is called distant retrograde orbit (DRO), which means it will provide the spacecraft with a stable route around the moon in the opposite direction from which the moon travels around earth. This orbit will not require the Orion to use as much fuel. NASA also confirmed that Orion is set to travel around 40,000 miles beyond the moon at its farther point while in that orbit.

The Artemis 1 mission manager, Michael Sarafin, said that this was a stress test for the capsule. However, its launch last week met and exceeded their expectations. According to NASA officials, the burn, which was created to assist Orion in entering an orbit around the moon, used the moon’s gravitational pull to help the spacecraft shift into an orbit. It will spend around six days in orbit.

The program manager of Orion, Howard Hu, spoke about the mission.

“And we’re like kids,” he said. “As soon as the pictures came out, people were taking pictures of what was on the screen and just smiles across the board. I mean, this is a, like I said, just not for me. I only dream for many people who work at NASA and who work with us on a contractor team and across in both engineering and flight operations and it’s a tremendous day.”

Hu is also hopeful that if everything goes as planned during the 3-week mission, a crew capsule will be sent into a wide orbit around the moon and splash down in the Pacific Ocean in December. The head of the Orion Lunar Spacecraft Program also said that humans could be active on the moon and will be doing science for durations by 2030.