US Celebrates 50 Years Since Apollo 11 Moon Landing
The US has celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing at parties, races, baseball games, and concerts across the country.
The celebrations began on July 16, when Michael Collins visited the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. About 100 of the 500 control room staff from the 1969 launch were also at the event. On July 16, 1969, a Saturn V rocket took off from Kennedy carrying Collins, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface of the moon while Michael Collins waited above in the mother ship, Columbia. Armstrong and Aldrin's ship, the Eagle, landed with just 17 seconds of fuel left.
Six hours later, Armstrong became the first human to step onto the moon. He said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Armstrong died in 2012. On July 20, in his hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, almost 2,000 runners competed in "Run to the Moon" races, and celebrations were held all over the US, with clocks counting down to the exact moments when the ship landed and Armstrong stepped on the moon.
Also on July 20, three astronauts – one American, one Italian and one Russian – took off for the International Space Station. They took off from Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz rocket, joining three others already on the space station.
Collins, now 88, and Aldrin, 89, met President Donald Trump at the White House on July 19. Trump hopes to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, and to Mars by the 2030s.
