Our return to the moon
A man reads Globe & Mail coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing with cherry pie and a coffee in a diner in southwestern Ontario, July 21, 1969.
HOUSTON (AP) - “Eagle, this is Columbia - they just gave you a go for powered descent.”
With those words of Apollo XI - astronaut Lt.Col Michael Collins alone in the mother ship called Columbia - the drama of man’s descent to a moon landing began unfolding.
“Current altitude about 46,000 feet,” mission control said describing the progress of Neil Armstrong and Col. Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin in the landing craft dubbed Eagle. “Everything’s looking good here.”
Roughly ten minutes later Neil Armstrong radioed back “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
That was the Apollo 11 moon landing that occurred July 20, 1969. Manned missions to the moon continued for another three years. Since then, missions focused on low-earth orbit, roughly 400km from the surface of the earth. The Apollo moon missions for comparison are 400,000km from the surface and Artemis II, set to launch today at 6:24pm ET will be the first manned mission to travel that distance since Apollo 17 in 1972. On board are astronauts Reid Wisema, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.
Set to be one of the most important spaceflights in decades, the mission is not designed to land on the lunar surface, rather it is a trial flight meant to test the systems needed for future Moon landings and longer deep-space travel.
The broader goal of the Artemis program is to establish sustainable long-term presence on the moon’s south pole, acting as an integral step towards manned space flights to Mars.
A woman reads coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in The Globe Magazine before her game of poker dice on the eve of the historic event, July 19, 1969.
Eleven-year-old Anthony Soda still prefers his Saturday morning comics, despite him (front-centre) and 8 other neighbourhood kids being featured in the Windsor Star’s coverage of the moon landing on the eve of the historic feat, July 19, 1969.
When asked by Star reporter, Suzanne Bourret, what they might do up on the moon, Soda replied ‘I’d like to go and explore up there because no on else has done it before. I’d practice weightlessness and take rock samples and see if there was any plant or water life. i think I’d only want to stay one day because it would get lonely without anyone else.”
A man reads Windsor Star coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in a diner in southwestern Ontario, July 21, 1969.
