55 Years Ago - Apollo 11 Lands on the Moon

Kennedy Space Center, FL. – On this date, July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 and the Lunar Module “Eagle” landed on the Moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This was truly a “Giant Leap for Mankind”. Fifty-Five years ago, the United States had put the human race on the surface of the moon leaving the first foot prints in the lunar soil. I was just an eight year old boy watching the historic launch just days earlier from the edge of the Banana River where the cruise ships now dock in Port Canaveral and then seeing this landing happen live on a fuzzy black and white TV in our living room.

A monument to the incredible achievement of Apollo 11 can be viewed at the Saturn V Center during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center.

The Apollo program ended with Apollo 17 in 1972, which was fifty-two years ago and mankind, has yet to repeat the process of placing humans back on the surface of the Moon.

Rounding dates, we had Mercury, Gemini and Apollo between 1961 and 1972, three programs in less than 12 years with the success of the moon landings of Apollo. The first flight of the Space Shuttle came in 1981 and the last flight took place in 2011. Space Shuttle was a thirty year program that kept us in Low-Earth Orbit conducting experiments, building the International Space Station and launching satellites from orbit. It would not be till May of 2022, eleven years later when the United States launches a manned rocket from our soil at the Kennedy Space Center with Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

In November of 2022, as part of the Artemis Program, NASA’s massive rocket the SLS launched from Launch Complex 39-B for the very first test mission of the rocket that is designed to take the Orion capsule to the Moon and eventually place astronauts back on the lunar surface. SLS still has at least one more fight with Orion before a planned lunar landing. 

 The first stage booster for the second mission is scheduled to arrive the week of July 22, 2024 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it will be moved to the V.A.B. to begin preparations for launch. Currently, the second flight is not scheduled till late 2025. 

Images Credit: Michael Howard – We Report Space