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 Apollo 11 lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin stands on the moon near the American flag during NASA's historic first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took the photo.Credit: NASA |
In 1962 that President John F. Kennedy delivered the now-famous line in a speech at Rice University in Texas: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Seven years later, the first humans walked on the lunar surface.
It took a Cold War space race with the Soviet Union to spur such statements and spark the United States' manned rush to the moon, a race that led to the first manned lunar landing with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. Once the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, wrapped up in 1972, no human has returned. NASA has sent lunar probes, but today, the agency is focused more on a potential human asteroid visit and putting boots on Mars. Other countries, on the other hand, are starting to think about manned lunar missions.
"NASA is not currently considering a human return to the moon and remains focused on the asteroid-retrieval mission," James Clay Moltz, a professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, wrote in an email to Space.com
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