Mare Tranquilitatis

“First, I believe that 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 the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
-President John F. Kennedy - May 25, 1961

Forty years ago today, three men set out to fulfill the hopes and dreams of not only the 400,000+ men and women of the Apollo Program, not only the United States of America, but of all mankind.



Launching from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 9:32 am local time, Apollo 11 took to the stars. Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. would carry the weight of the world on their shoulders for the entire four and a half day voyage from the Earth to the Moon.

NASA, working alongside the Kennedy Library & Museum, has launched We Choose The Moon, an interactive website that follows the events of the Apollo 11 Mission in real-time.

Go take a look. You’ll be glad you did.

God speed, Apollo 11!

-Jos

“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, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
- President John F. Kennedy