We Choose the Moon. Apollo 11 - 40 Years Later

 

Forty years ago, millions gathered around grainy black and white television images as the first man set foot on the moon, in what remains for many the pinnacle of manned spaceflight.

That moon landing on July 20, 1969, was the first of just six times that any human being has visited the Earth's nearest celestial neighbour, and it has been more than 30 years since any person has been there.

In the decades since Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first touched the surface of the moon in the Eagle lander, the moment has become one of the iconic images of the 20th century. At the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, many of the visitors old enough to remember that day tell their children and grandchildren about where they were when man first set foot on the moon as they point at the Columbia spacecraft that carried the astronauts there.