Voyager

See the World

July 16, 2019, marked the milestone fiftieth anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 launch, the iconic mission that transported Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin to the moon. The historic endeavor secured America’s place as a technological world leader—not to mention the new front-runner in the Space Race. An estimated 20 percent of the world’s population watched on July 20, 1969, as Armstrong and Aldrin stepped foot where no man had gone before. This year, the US celebrated with hundreds of events, parties, exhibits, documentaries, and more commemorating this incredible feat of human ingenuity.

Buzz Aldrin poses beside the deployed United States flag during Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the lunar surface. The lunar module (LM) is on the left, and the footprints of the astronauts are visible in the soil of the moon. Neil Armstrong took this photo with a 70mm Hasselblad lunar surface camera. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the Eagle LM to explore the moon’s Sea of Tranquility region, Michael Collins remained with the command and service module Columbia in lunar orbit. | Photo courtesy of NASA.gov

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