July 20th 2018

-Source- -Quote of the Day- Thats one small step for man one giant leap for mankind." -Neil Armstrong -Source-History com- At 10:56 p.m. EDT American astronaut Neil Armstrong 240000 miles from Earth speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: Thats one small step for man one giant leap for mankind." Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25 1961: I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." At the time the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedys bold proposal. In 1966 after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. Then on January 27 1967 tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire. Despite the setback NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead and in October 1968 Apollo 7 the first manned Apollo mission orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing. In December of the same year Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon and back and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. Then in May the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission.