July 20 - The Moon Landing

This Day in History: 20 July 2020

 

20 July 1969

 

51 years ago, today, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon began in a famous appeal made by President John F. Kennedy. Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal as the United States was still trailing behind the Soviet Union in space developments. Despite some setbacks, NASA forged ahead, and in October 1968, the first manned Apollo mission orbited Earth and successfully tested many proposed systems needed for a moon journey. Apollo 8 later took three astronauts to the far side of the moon, and Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in preparation for the landing mission.

 

Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19, but it would be a day later when the lunar module, the Eagle, would descend to the lunar surface. When the craft touched down on the moon, Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston "the Eagle has landed". A few hours later, the progress of the landing was sent back to Earth from a television camera, where hundreds of millions watched in anticipation. Armstrong spoke his famous quote "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" into the microphone, and placed his foot onto the powdery surface of the moon. Although there would be five more successful lunar landing missions, the program was too expensive to continue after 1972, costing close to £100 billion in today's dollars. However, the expense was justified by Kennedy in order to beat the Soviets, and so ongoing missions lost their viability.

 

Want to find out more about the moon landing? Click here for more information, or here for some facts about the event. Alternatively, click here for more on moon-landing conspiracies.