Apollo 11 s 50th Anniversary: Here s What To Know About The First Moon Landing

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Buzz Aldrin stands on the moon beside seismic measurement gear, part of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. To the right is the lunar module Eagle.

NASA
mission, as he stepped onto the lunar surface. You know the line: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  And you always wonder: Didn't he mean to say, "...for a man"? 
In fairness, he did have a lot on his mind. Even listening to the recording afterward, Armstrong still wasn't quite sure.

"I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn't said -- although it actually might have been," he told biographer James R. Hansen.

A footprint left on the moon by Buzz Aldrin.

NASA

History has in fact remembered Armstrong fondly. And now we're celebrating the . It was July 20, 1969, when Armstrong and fellow astronaut made cosmic history as they became the first humans ever to stand and walk on a heavenly body not called Earth.

It was a breathtaking engineering and logistical achievement. Humans had only started venturing into space less than a decade earlier -- and even then, just barely outside Earth's atmosphere. Our experience of space, which started with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in April 1961, was still quite limited when Apollo 8 made a trip 'round the moon in December 1968, the first time humans had ever broken free of Earth's orbit.


























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But after a total of six moon landings for the in less than four years, that was it. Since Apollo 17 in December 1972, no one's been back to the moon. NASA spent the next several decades focusing its manned spaceflight efforts on the space shuttle and on missions to the International Space Station.

Now there are once again plans to put people on the moon. NASA says it expects to make a new moon landing by 2024 through its , both for its own sake and as a stepping-stone toward . Meanwhile, founder and founder Elon Musk also have their eyes on lunar adventures.

As NASA and others mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, here's a look back at that achievement -- and at what lies ahead.
Real quick: How far away is the moon, anyway?
The distance from the Earth to the moon varies because of the moon's elliptical orbit, from about 225,000 miles (363,000 kilometers) to 252,000 miles. By comparison, the ISS is only about 250 miles away -- that is, one one-thousandth as far as the moon.

The Apollo missions needed roughly three days' travel time each way -- Apollo 11 got from Earth to lunar orbit at midday on day three of its mission. (For Apollo 15, it was about 4.5 days from Earth liftoff to touchdown on the lunar surface.)

The Apollo 11 crew (left to right): Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Côn Đảo Buzz Aldrin.

NASA
That's an awfully long way to go. Why even bother?
Two words: space race. Starting in the 1950s, the US and the Soviet Union were going at it for bragging rights and military advantage, sending rockets, satellites, dogs and monkeys, and eventually people, into the ether.

Then, on May 25, 1961, made a brash declaration: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
How did the astronauts get there?
The lunar missions lifted off atop a  rocket, to date the most powerful ever.

After separation from the Saturn rocket, the astronauts continued to the moon in the command service module. The CSM had three parts: the command Du lịch Côn Đảo module (CM), kinh nghiệm du lịch côn đảo with the classic "space capsule" shape and containing the crew's quarters and flight controls; the expendable service module (SM), which provided propulsion and support systems; and the lunar module (LM), which looked like a geometry project with spindly legs and which took two astronauts to the lunar surface while a third remained in the CM.  
How did the Apollo 11 mission unfold? What exactly did Armstrong and Aldrin do?
First of all, they simply proved it could be done.

The overview: Apollo 11 lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16 and returned to Earth on July 24, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after traveling a total of 953,054 miles in eight days, three hours and 18 minutes.

On July 20, the LM (nickname: Eagle) touched down in the moon's Sea of Tranquility after a stressful final few minutes. "There were some pretty hairy moments," James Hansen, Armstrong's biographer, said in an interview. "The onboard computer was taking them down into a site that was not quite what they wanted, and Neil had to take over manually. They maybe had 20 or 30 seconds of fuel left when he actually got it down."