40 Years Since Apollo 11

摘要

Just 66 years after Orville Wright flew 170 feet along the dunes of Kitty Hawk, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blasted toward the moon atop a Saturn V rocket. Collins, the command module pilot, spent 24 hours on his own in Columbia, orbiting the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the lunar surface. "I knew I was alone in a way that no Earthling has ever been before," Collins would later observe. The three returned to Earth on July 24,1969; the command module was given to the National Air and Space Museum in 1970. For years it was displayed directly beneath the Wright Flyer (which now has its own gallery), allowing visitors to move from the Aerial Age to the Space Age in a glance.