Americans were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing on Saturday, a generation-defining event watched by half a billion people globally, as the US seeks to pivot to a new era of crewed space exploration.
At 4:18pm ET on July 20, 1969, the lunar module carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Sea of Tranquility, following a four-day journey.“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong said.
“Looking back, landing on the moon wasn’t just our job, it was a historic opportunity to prove to the world America’s can-do spirit,” Aldrin, 89, tweeted Saturday. It plans to establish a lunar orbiting platform, called a “Gateway,” studying how living organisms react to the radiation and microgravity of a deep space environment over a long period, as it looks ahead to a crewed Mars mission in the 2030s.
According to a release by maker Lockheed Martin, it needs several months more of testing before it is delivered for launch processing in early 2020.In an interview with Fox News Friday night, Aldrin lamented the lack of progress in human space exploration since the Apollo program, which ended in 1972.“It would not be at all helpful to be competing for the Moon or Mars, that’s very wasteful,” he said.
“I lead a quiet life. I’ll be walking along down my street at night, when it’s starting to get dark and I sense something over my right shoulder and I look up and see that little silver sliver up there and think, ‘Oh that’s the Moon! I’ve been there!’In Houston, thousands of space enthusiasts descended upon the visitor area of the NASA Johnson Space Center, where military personnel put on a parachute display and held musical performances.
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