curiosity

As a human being, we have an inner desire to explore everything in this universe. This desire urges us to find new frontiers to satisfy our curiosity. Throughout human history, there are a lot of events that happened that resulted in the discovery of the unknown. This desire also revolutionized every field of the world. Industrial and technological revolutions are also the product of it. Our desire to explore each and everything in the universe expands human limits and leads us to touch the Earth’s nearest neighbor, the Moon.  Neil Armstrong was the first man to land on the moon on 20th July 1969. The Apollo 11 mission of moon landing is marked as a tremendous achievement in human history. This was a moment of great pride not just for NASA and the United States but also for the whole world. “That’s one small step for one man, one giant leap for mankind.” These are the iconic words that Niel Armstrong expressed when landing on the surface.  In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced his dream goal, “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” seemed impossible. “We didn’t have a spaceship that could fly to the moon,” American journalist Charles Fishman said. “We didn’t have a rocket that could launch to the moon. We didn’t have a computer small enough or powerful enough to do the navigation necessary to get people to the moon. We didn’t have space for food.” On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first individual to orbit the Earth.  After this achievement, the moon race was on. During this situation, Fishman published his new book, ‘One Giant Leap’, which revealed the story of the ordinary people who backed the Apollo mission to accomplish the most extraordinary human achievement of the moon landing. The mission was started from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The main purpose of the mission was to land on the Moon and return safely to Earth. The crew included three members, Commander Neil Armstrong, along with Lunar Module Pilot Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. All of them were experienced astronauts who had already accomplished space missions. They were aimed not only at setting foot on the moon but also at carrying out scientific research, employing instruments, and collecting samples. The spacecraft contained a Columbia (command module), a service module, and an Eagle (lunar module), and began a three-day journey before entering lunar orbit. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin made history with their moonwalk. They leave important items on the moon such as commemorative plates and silicon discs with messages of goodwill. After spending more than 21 hours on the moon, collecting samples, and conducting experiments, both the astronauts returned to the command module, where Collins stayed. They gathered, clipped, and began their journey back to Earth. When some adjustments and re-entry procedures were successfully carried out. They resulted in a crash landing in the Pacific Ocean. Despite poor weather conditions, it changed the landing point. After eight days, three hours, and 18 minutes, the mission covered a distance of approximately 953,054 miles. This is a historic moment for humanity’s space exploration and a piece of evidence of human achievement and innovation. After spending more than eight days in space, the astronauts returned safely to Earth on July 24, 1969. A successful mission symbolizes human ingenuity and the spirit of exploration. When Neil Armstrong was asked about his experience of being the first astronaut to touch the moon land he expressed “I can only attribute that to the fact that every guy in the project, every guy at the bench building something, every assembler, every inspector, every guy that’s setting up the tests, cranking the torque wrench, and so on, is saying, man or women, ‘If anything goes wrong here, it’s not going to be my fault, because my part is going to be better than I have to make it.’ And when you have hundreds of thousands of people all doing their jobs a little better than they have to, you get a performance improvement. And that’s the only reason we could have pulled this whole thing off.”  Looking ahead, NASA’s ambitions are turning to Mars, to send humans to the Red Planet. The success of Apollo 11 served as proof of the possibility of successful human exploration in space, promising future endeavors beyond Earth. HOME