40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

President John F. Kennedy had courageous when he in a speach (which you can read here) in May 1961 said the following:

“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 the Earth.”

And the Americans managed to fulfill the goal of Kennedy. On July 16, 1969, the three astronauts Neil Alden Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. was onboard Apollo 11 on the way to the Moon. Four days later, July 20th, The Eagle landed on the Lunar surface, Sea of Tranquility.

Here you can hear the countdown to the launches of Apollo 11.

[flashvideo type=sound volume=60 height=20 file=https://technofranki.net/blog/wp-content/2009/07/apollo11_main_countdown_launch.mp3 /]

So today does marks the 40th years anniversary of Moon landing. There was great competition in the 50’s and 60’s  between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Russians where ahead in the space race after they were first to send an artificial satellite (Sputnik 1), a living being (Laika the dog) and the first man (Jurij Gagarin) into space. But the Americans were the first to land on another planet.

While Michael Collins was left in the main vessel Columbia, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin where in The Eagle on the way to the Moon’s surface. In addition to the moon landing whitch was a technical achievement for the Americans, it gave us perhaps two of the most famous quotes from the last century, namely “The Eagle has landed” and “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” as Armstrong said after he was the first to set foot on foreign soil.

Here you can hear the sound clip from the Eagle’s landing on the Moon.

[flashvideo type=sound volume=60 height=20 file=https://technofranki.net/blog/wp-content/2009/07/apollo11_main_landing.mp3 /]

And here is the sound clip from Armstrong’s “speach“.

[flashvideo type=sound volume=60 height=20 file=https://technofranki.net/blog/wp-content/2009/07/apollo11_main_onesmall2.mp3 /]

Here is the remastered edition of the moon landing in connection with the 40 year anniversary.

If you need more information about moon landing, so check out NASA’s Apollo 40th Anniversary pages or Wikipedia.org (which is also my sources for this article).

Here are some images from the Apollo 11 expedition (taken from Great Images in NASA).

Photos, audio and video are used in accordance with NASA guidelines, “NASA generally has no objections to the reproduction and use of NASA material” and “You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material if it is for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages.“