Buzz Aldrin stands on the moon beside seismic measurement gear, part of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. To the right is the...
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
Even Neil Armstrong couldn t remember exactly what he said in the famous line he spoke during humanity s first-ever moon landing, NASA s Apollo mission, as he stepped onto the lunar surface.
You know the sentence: 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 ready to celebrate the th anniversary of that moon landing. It was July , , when Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin 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 , was still quite limited when Apollo made a trip round the moon in December , 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 Apollo program in less than four years, that was it. Since Apollo in December , 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 through its Artemis program, both for its own sake and as a stepping-stone toward eventual missions to Mars. Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk also have their eyes on lunar adventures.
As NASA and others get set to mark the th 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 , miles , kilometers to , miles. By comparison, the ISS is only about miles away -- that is, one one-thousandth as far as the moon.
The Apollo missions needed roughly three days travel time each way -- Apollo got from Earth to lunar orbit at midday on day three of its mission. For Apollo , it was about . days from Earth liftoff to touchdown on the lunar surface.
The Apollo crew left to right: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.
NASA That s an awfully long way to go. Why even bother?
Two words: space race. Starting in the s, 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 , , President John F. Kennedy 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 Saturn V 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 module CM, 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 mission unfold? What exactly did Armstrong and Aldrin do?
First of all, they simply proved it could be done.
The overview: Apollo lifted off from Launch Pad A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July and returned to Earth on July , splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after traveling a total of , miles in eight days, three hours and minutes.
On July , 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, biographer James Hansen 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 or seconds of fuel left when he actually got it down.
About four hours later, Armstrong stepped out, just before p.m. ET on the th, a Sunday. He was outside for about . hours, with Aldrin joining him for about . hours. They were on the moon for hours, minutes including seven hours of sleep total before returning to orbit to rejoin the third member of the crew, Michael Collins, who d been waiting, watching and worrying.
Venturing no more than feet from the LM and working under a -degree sun, Armstrong and Aldrin -- like tourists everywhere -- took lots of photos and video, and gathered souvenirs in the form of moon rocks and soil samples. They also set up a couple of rudimentary experiments, one to measure seismic activity and another as a target for Earth-based lasers to measure the Earth-moon distance precisely, which returned data for days. They left behind an American flag, some of the most famous footprints in history, a coin-size silicon disc etched in microscopic detail with messages from world leaders and a small plaque saying We came in peace for all mankind.
Armstrong may have the most famous lines from the mission, and Collins the best book Carrying the Fire, but Aldrin nailed the description of the moonscape: magnificent desolation.
Those moon rocks were a pretty big deal, right?
That s right. The Apollo crew brought back kg almost pounds of lunar material, including rocks, modest core samples and that dusty lunar soil that s so great for making footprints. The sample included basalt from molten lava, breccia fragments of older rocks and anorthocite surface rock that may have been part of an ancient crust. Those moon rocks and other samples, from all the Apollo missions, helped scientists get a better understanding of the moon s origins.
What else was going on in ?
It was a crazy time. Airline hijacking was a big thing, especially to Cuba. The Vietnam War was raging, as were protests against it. Honduras and El Salvador fought a soccer war. The Stonewall Riots in New York took place in late June. Richard Nixon had only just begun his first term as US president.
Apollo software engineer Margaret Hamilton and the source code for the Apollo guidance computer
NASA
On the technology front, the US would get its first ATM in September, and the first message sent on the ARnet, a precursor to the internet, would happen in late October.
For about a week as May turned into June, John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their bed-in in Amsterdam, at which Lennon recorded Give Peace a Chance. The Beatles Get Back was No. for five weeks from May into June, and the Fifth Dimension s AquariusLet the Sun Shine was No. . David Bowie released Space Oddity on July . The middle of August would bring the Woodstock festival.
Debuts on TV that September and October would include Scooby-Doo, The Brady Bunch and Monty Python s Flying Circus.
And Turnabout Intruder, the final episode of the original Star Trek series, aired June .
How many people have been on the moon?
The Apollo missions put a total of men on the lunar surface over the course of six visits. That s it. Then there were the others who ve flown that astonishing distance but never touched down -- six CM pilots on the lunar landing missions, plus the crews of Apollo , and . Three of those people made the trip twice, so the grand total of humans who ve been as far as the moon is .
Here s who s been on the moon:
Apollo : Armstrong and AldrinApollo : Pete Conrad, Alan BeanApollo : Alan Shepard, Edgar MitchellApollo : David Scott, James IrwinApollo : John Young, Charles DukeApollo : Eugene Cernan, Harrison SchmittWhat else has landed on the moon?
We ve put all kinds of unmanned spacecraft on the moon, starting with the hard landing of the Soviet Union s Luna in . The US first spacecraft on the moon, Ranger , arrived in April . Both countries landed a number of other machines there during the s, including five Surveyor spacecraft from the US. Only some of them were soft or powered landings.
More recently, other countries have been getting into the game. China put the Chang e onto the moon in , making the first soft landing since Luna in . In January of this year, China s Chang e became the first spacecraft to land on the fabled dark side of the moon.
In April, Israel sent the Beresheet spacecraft to the moon, but with an unhappy ending -- it crashed there.
Where does President Trump stand on missions to the moon?
NASA has been fired up for a return to the moon at least since December , when President Donald Trump signed White House Space Policy Directive , which urged a renewed focus on lunar missions. Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit, the directive states, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.
Curiously, President Trump tweeted in May that NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that years ago. The tweet did go on to suggest that he still sees the moon as part of NASA s eventual missions to Mars.
That came less than a month after the Trump administration said it wanted an extra $. billion added to NASA s budget for next year to help pave the way for humans to return to the moon in the coming decade.
So what comes next?
As things stand, the space agency plans to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon by , in what s now known as the Artemis program, with a whole new rocket the Space Launch System and crew capsule Orion. The program will eventually integrate a gateway spacecraft that will stay in lunar orbit while missions head down to the surface. Here s the timetable:
Late -- First commercial deliverieslanders to the moon-- Launch of SLSOrion, uncrewed, in Exploration Mission--- Crew around the moon in Exploration Mission--- By December, setup of the first gateway element the power and propulsion system for a one-year demo in space, aboard a private rocket-- Land a rover, with the help of the commercial space industry-- Americans on the moon including the first woman-- Sustained presence on moon
NASA also sees these moon missions as preparation for eventual crewed missions to Mars, tentatively in the s.
In May, NASA named some of the companies that ll pitch in with the Artemis effort, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Also in May, Amazon and Blue Origin chief Jeff Bezos unveiled a design for a Blue Moon lunar lander, which in addition to people could transport rovers to carry out scientific missions and shoot off small satellites.
When can I go?
Soon, maybe, if you have lots of disposable income or the right connections. Elon Musk has plans to send the first commercial customer, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, on a flight around the moon in SpaceX s forthcoming BFR rocket. Maezawa plans to invite a handful of artists to join him on that weeklong flight in . The trip doesn t include a moon landing.
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