On July 20, it will be fifty years since Apollo XI reached the moon after 96 hours of travel. It was in 1969 when Commander Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface for the first time in history, leaving his mark on one of the most important events of the 20th century.
From that date, and until 1973, several trips were carried out, with a total of twelve human landings on the satellite.
Neil Armstrong
was the first man to walk on the moon and for that reason he has gone down in history. More than 600 million people, with a television still incipient in countries like ours, witnessed those first steps through the lunar dust. His phrase, “it is a small step for a man, but a great leap for humanity” has passed into posterity. In a later interview, Armstrong acknowledged that the mission had only a 50% chance of going well and that the launch of the moon towards the earth was not entirely guaranteed.
Buzz Aldrin
It took just ten minutes longer to step on the moon than Armstrong, long enough not to have the enormous privilege of being the first. Despite the fact that his fame is less in general than that of his traveling companion, the figure of Aldrin has suffered various ‘tributes’: He has been the protagonist in an episode of The Simpsons and one of the protagonists of the Toy Story saga, Buzz Lightyear, bears that name in his honor.
Pete Conrad
The third man to reach the moon did so four months later than Apollo XI, in November 1969. Upon reaching the milestone, Charles ‘Pete’ Conrad showed his jocularity and height in communicating, so that you’ll hear it from every radio and television set in the world, the line: “It would be a small step for Neil, but it’s been a big one for me.”
Alan Bean
Together with Conrad, he was one of the pilots of the second lunar mission, that of Apollo XII. They explored the lunar surface and did various experiments. In fact, they installed the first nuclear power station to provide the power source. Fourth man to walk on the moon, Bean left NASA life in 1983, to dedicate himself fully to painting.
Alan Shepard
In 1971 he commanded the Apollo 14 mission and became the fifth man to land on the moon. However, Shepard already had extensive experience in space. In fact, he is considered the first American astronaut, and the second in the world after Yuri Gagarin, since in May 1961, only 20 days after the Russian, he made a suborbital flight. His great achievement was that his flight, unlike the Soviet, was not completely automatic and he directed the ship for a few moments. With a strong and serious character, he surprised everyone when, in the middle of the television broadcast of the moon walk, he took out, from no one knows where, a golf club and gave a couple of balls to the delight of lovers of this sport.
Edgard Mitchell
Member of the Apollo 14 team , along with Alan Shepard and pilot Stuart Roosa, set the record for the longest stay on the lunar surfacewith 33 hours. Likewise, he made the longest lunar walk, with 9 hours and 17 minutes. After leaving NASA, he achieved some relevance for his strong defense of paranormal phenomena and UFOs.
David Scott
The seventh man to walk on the moon had extensive experience as an astronaut. In fact, he was present on the missions leading up to Armstrong’s first moon landing. Scott also used the cameras on his moon landing, although in this case not to demonstrate his golfing skills. He demonstrated, by dropping a hammer and a feather from his hands , that the absence of atmosphere causes gravity to act the same, regardless of weight. Both objects hit the lunar surface at the same time.
Jim Irwin
Among the men who stepped on the moon was, perhaps, one of the most controversial. Upon his return from the moon landing, he became rich selling photographs of the trip , for which NASA prohibited him from flying with the Apollo again. Also, he founded a religious group after his lunar experience. Despite this, his mission lasted no more and no less than twelve days and he managed to make three lunar walks. He was the first astronaut to tour the moon with an all-terrain vehicle, the so-called rover.
John Young
As commander of the Apollo 16 mission , he was the ninth man to walk on the moon. So far, he can be said to have been the longest serving astronaut .. So much so that he spent 42 years as an active astronaut and the only pilot to have commanded four different classes of spacecraft. In addition, he spent his entire career working for NASA, although in recent years he was in more administrative tasks.
Charlie Duke
He was a member of the Apollo 16 mission , considered one of the most fruitful in scientific terms , since numerous experiments were carried out. Likewise, thanks to the lunar rover, the vehicle with which they moved across the lunar surface, they were able to bring almost a hundred kilos of lunar rock to earth. After his mission, he left NASA to go to the private market. Somewhat later he founded the company Charlie Duke Enterprises.
Eugene Cernan
The son of European immigrants, Cernan is one of three men, along with Jim Lovell and John Young, who have traveled to the moon twice. Although it was on his second occasion, on the Apollo 17 mission , when he stepped on the moon. In addition to several lunar walks (he traveled more than 30 kilometers in the rover) and some other experiment, he wrote his daughter’s initials, TDC, on the lunar surface. He was the last of the expedition to leave the lunar surface , so, To this day, he is the last man to have been on the moon.
Harrison Schmitt
Unlike the eleven who preceded him on the moon, Schmitt was neither an engineer nor a pilot, but a geologist .. Therefore, his mission was to collect as much information as possible from the moon, studying its surface, a task that he had already carried out on earth with the samples collected previously. He is credited with the authorship of the famous photograph ‘the blue marble’ , where a hitherto unpublished panoramic view of the earth is observed.
