Projects: Space Information
One Small Step
Remembering Apollo 11 - Special Coverage
Apollo 11 Bootprint on the Moon
A close-up view of astronaut Buzz Aldrin's boot and bootprint in the lunar soil, photographed with a 70mm lunar surface camera during the Apollo 11 lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) on July 20th, 1969.
Credit: NASA |
July 20, 2009
Forty years have passed since that heady moment when the world watched grainy TV images of two space-suited figures stepping off a ladder into moon dust and history. We now celebrate this anniversary of Apollo 11 with a mixture of pride and nostalgia for the day when humanity became a multi-world species.
In the following essay by Carl Sagan, co-founder of The Planetary Society, he both evokes our wonder that men walked on the Moon and discusses the achievement in its political context. Sagan wrote the "The Gift of Apollo" in 1994 for another Apollo 11 anniversary -- the 25th -- and we share his evocative words with you now.
We also include links to other Apollo 11 anniversary coverage,
including a delightful Q&A interview by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael
Collins with himself!
The Gift of Apollo
By Carl Sagan
Credit: The Planetary Society |
It’s a sultry night in July. You’ve fallen asleep in the armchair. Abruptly, you startle awake, disoriented. The television set is on but not the sound. You strain to understand what you’re seeing. Two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are softly dancing under a pitch-black sky. They make strangle little skipping motions, which propel them upward amid barely perceptible clouds of dust. But something is wrong. They take too long to come down. Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying – a little. Your rub your eyes, but the dreamlike tableau persist.
Read the full article »
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Apollo Astronaut Michael Collins Interviews Himself
"These are questions I am most frequently asked, plus a few others I
have added. For more information, please consult my book, the 40th
anniversary edition of CARRYING THE FIRE, published by Farrar, Straus
& Giroux. All of the following sections in quotation marks are from
that reference."
Read the full interview »
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Planetary Radio
Ray Bradbury Looks Back at Apollo 11
The beloved author, poet, dramatist and visionary Ray Bradbury revisits Planetary Radio to share his memories of the first moon landing forty years ago this week. Ray also talks about Mars and other favorite topics. Bill Nye joins our celebration of one of the greatest days in all of human history. Bruce Betts and Mat Kaplan learn what listeners might have said if they had been in Neil Armstrong's boots.
Listen up »
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LROC images sites of the Apollo landings!
Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Arizona State University |
By Zibi Turtle
Research scientist in the Planetary Exploration group at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab.
Over the last week, as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team's waited impatiently, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has imaged all but one of the Apollo landing sites. The images released today show the sites of Apollo missions 11 and 14 through 17 (the Apollo 12 site will be imaged in the next few weeks).
See LRO's Apollo mission landing site images »
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Apollo 11 Moon Landing Opened New Vistas
By Mike O'Sullivan
Voice of America
At the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, executive director Louis Friedman says the losses prompted a reassessment and renewed commitment to manned exploration beyond earth orbit.
Louis Friedman
Louis Friedman
"Humans are explorers," he said. "The idea of making the cost and risk of human space flight requires destinations because you have to explore new worlds. And that only became obvious after the sad loss of life in the tragic shuttle accidents."
Read the full article »
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Climb Aboard Apollo 11 Time Machine
Grab your bell bottoms and Tang, and travel back to 1969 when Apollo 11's journey to the Moon captivated the world, and Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's boot prints in the lunar dust transformed us into a multi-world species.
NASA Re-broadcast
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of that historic landing, NASA will replay audio from the entire Apollo 11 mission at exactly the same time and date that it was broadcast in 1969. Beginning at 7:32 am EDT on Thursday, July 16, NASA's coverage will open two hours before the spacecraft launched and will continue through splashdown and crew recovery on July 24. Listen to communications between the astronauts and ground teams, as well as commentary from NASA's Mission Control.
Listen to the rebroadcast »
WeChooseTheMoon.org
Of course, President John F Kennedy helped place America on its lunar trajectory, famously saying in 1962, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." To honor Kennedy's vision and inspiration, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum will open WeChooseTheMoon.org, a new interactive website, on Thursday.
WeChooseTheMoon.org will also recreate Apollo 11's lunar mission, beginning with the launch from Cape Kennedy at 9:32 a.m. EDT. In addition to audio, the website will utilize historic video and photos to help recreate the mission and will offer "real-time" transmissions via three different Twitter feeds:
Apollo 11 to Houston: AP11_Spacecraft Houston to Apollo 11: AP11_Capcom Eagle to Houston & Columbia: AP11_Eagle So through the virtual wizardry of 2009, step back four decades to 1969 when we did not need to use special effects to recreate another world because we actually sent two humans to walk upon one.
Step back with We Choose the Moon »
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