July 16, 1969, A crew of Astronauts head for the Moon. Their names: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Every second, they are making history. They’re in the spacecraft Apollo 11 made by the NASA space program. The program was founded on July 29, 1958, By Dwight D. Eisenhower.In NASA’s first few years they were desperately trying to figure out a way to put the first man on the moon. This was because of the space race going on between the U.S. and Russia. President John F. Kennedy was determined by the end of his Presidency, America would have been the first to put a manned spacecraft on the Lunar surface. NASA made the Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini space programs. Apollo was the first to head to the moon. As Armstrong and his crew approach the Moon’s surface the are pulled to the dark side of the moon. In order to see what they are doing the need to be on the side facing the sun, so the astronauts spend the next 24 hours in the Moon’s orbit. Finally, after their long wait, they approached the surface using a mounted rocket on the nose of the spacecraft. They had landed on July 20, 1969. The first man to step out, Neil Armstrong giving the famous announcement to the scientist back home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Then came Buzz down with him. Michael had to stay with the Columbia to pilot it around until Neil and Buzz would reconnect with him and the Columbia. Neil and Buzz explored the cratered lunar surface, discovering most of the materials up there were similar to those on Earth. The team’s mission was to put the flag in the ground showing America had won the space race.
We had done it! We had put the first man on the moon! Before the 2nd Apollo 11 mission, there had been another without Neil, Buzz, Michael, or any astronaut for that matter. NASA had first sent Apollo 11 as an unmanned spacecraft to the lunar surface, to check how the spacecraft would hold up. Infact in 1961 NASA had put a Russian man named Yuri Gagarin into space but not onto the lunar surface. A month or so later the first American was launched into space, but again did not land on the moon. After only three years after starting, NASA had put a man in space but not on the moon and a month later the same thing. Within only 8 years of putting the first two men in space, they had launched a craft named Apollo 11 which carried three American men to the moon. Two of which had experienced the surface one on one. On their trip, they collected many samples of moon rocks to bring back to Earth, the samples the collected weighed a total of 47.8 pounds or 21.5 kg. On their way back to their ship, they had left famous traces of evidence or instance, the American flag, and the boot print all of these events fulfilled the speech Kennedy had given in 1961 saying: “Before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” The astronauts reconnected with the Columbia and started their descent back to Earth. They had left behind equipment for the years to come America would be remembered for this life changing trip. As they approached Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft reached a speed of nearly 25,000 miles per hour. When they were reaching the surface of Earth, they released the parachute. This caused the ship to drift into the Pacific Ocean just Southwest of Hawaii. This declares the end of the first manned moon mission. Officially declaring the end of the space race with America being the winner. The astronaut's journey had ended at about an hour after noon, on July, 24 the journey was over. After almost a 8 day journey, the astronauts were in a gravitational atmosphere again. They had had the time of their life. They astronauts described the mission as being nearly flawless. The equipment had worked every bit of how they had intended. This made NASA the main space way of space travel up until even this day.
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