Landing on the moon

LANDING ON THE MOON

•           The moon has been explored many times in the last half century.

•           We probably know that astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969.

•           And the astronauts landed on the moon more than once.

•           The first men to go to the moon were the crew of the American space mission, Apollo 11.

•           Apollo 11 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Florida, United States of America, on July 16, 1969.

•           The rocket that carried it into space was Saturn 5.

•           There were three American astronauts in Apollo 11 —Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

•           Neil Armstrong was the first to step out, and thus became the first man to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969.

•           Amstrong and Aldrin stayed for two and a half hours on the moon and collected rock samples to bring back to Earth.

Figure 19: (a) An astronaut landing on the moon

(b) Aldrin’s footprints

•           After Apollo 11, many more missions have been carried out to the moon and elsewhere in space.

•           Some spacecraft have been manned, that is, had crew in them.

•           But many unmanned spacecraft have been sent to orbit the moon and bring back information through photographs.