America’s NASA Apollo 11 made the historic three-person journey to the moon, landing on 20 July 1969. These photos are taken from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, during my visit in 2013.
The three men—38-year-old Neil Armstrong, 39-year-old Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, and 38-year-old Michael Collins made the journey to the moon, of about 384,400 kilometres, taking almost four days.
Armstrong was the first man to land on the moon, followed by Aldrin—after emerging from the Apollo Lunar Module. Collins remained in orbit in the Apollo spacecraft. They spent one day on the moon, called an extravehicular activity (EVA), lifting off on 21 July. The total duration of time on the moon was 21 minutes and 31 seconds, with the total EVA taking two hours and 31 minutes.
A total of 12 men have walked on the moon, all of them Americans in the NASA program. The Apollo astronauts (1963-1972) made only 18 moonwalks. The spacesuit technology developed during the mid-20th century was originally designed for short-duration missions to the moon. The suits were uncomfortable and tough to manoeuvre in, and the Apollo astronauts couldn’t bend down to pick up rocks; they had to use a pole.
International Day of Human Space Flight, declared by the United Nations General Assembly, is celebrated annually on 12 April. The UN chose the date because on 12 April 1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first person to travel into outer space.
Gagarin conducted a 108-minute orbit in the Vostok 1 spacecraft. While there is controversy that Gagarin may not have made a complete orbit, he nevertheless was the first person to make a suborbital flight. The American astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space less than a month later in the Mercury spacecraft. But American John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on 20 February 1962 when he left Cape Canaveral. He spent four hours 55 minutes and 23 seconds in space, completing three orbits of Earth in the Friendship 7 space capsule. In 1988 – 36 years after his first orbit of Earth – Glenn returned to NASA and became the oldest man to travel to space, at the age of 77. He died in 2016, aged 95.
After the moon landing, the next most extraordinary feat of space technology is the development of the International Space Station (ISS), which is as large as two football fields and includes six separate science labs. More than 100 major pieces were assembled 230 miles above Earth.
In November 1998, the Russian Proton rocket made the first flight to the ISS, delivering the first module, called the Zarya Control Module. The United State’s Space Shuttle Endeavour followed in December 1998, and astronauts attached the Unity Node to Zarya. The first crew, consisting of one American and two Russians, arrived at ISS in October 2000. From that point on, ISS has been permanently staffed.
Astronauts who work on the ISS (for about six months at a time), conduct experiments on board. They study the long-term effects of weightlessness on humans, invent substances that work best in very low gravity, and more. Participating countries are: the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Brazil.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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