Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon.

In the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union also competed in space. The Soviet launch of the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957 and Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight in 1961 came as a great shock to the United States. America founded NASA in 1958, and in 1961 President Kennedy pledged to land a man on the Moon before the decade was out (the Apollo programme).

Launched from Kennedy Space Center on a Saturn V rocket on 16 July 1969, Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle landed in the Moon’s Sea of Tranquillity on 20 July. Neil Armstrong stepped out first, saying "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", followed by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the command module. The two moonwalkers spent about two and a half hours on the surface collecting rocks and planting the American flag, and all three returned to Earth on 24 July.

The scene was televised around the world and showed that the United States had pulled ahead in the space race. Koreans also watched it live, and the government declared the day after the landing (21 July, Korean time) a special public holiday. The Apollo programme sent twelve people to the Moon by 1972. In 1975 American and Soviet spacecraft docked in orbit (Apollo–Soyuz), opening a path to cooperation.