Man on the Moon
As the largest object in the night sky, the moon has held a fascination for man since the earliest times. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s however, that the technology was developed to send a man to the moon.
The first unmanned moon landing
was the Soviet probe Lunar 9, which touched down on the moon in 1966.
Then the first men to orbit the moon were the astronauts on the US Apollo-8 in 1968.
On July 16, 1969, a rocket was launched from Kennedy Space Center in USA.
On July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. He said the historic words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Apollo-11 was the spaceship that
took the three American astronauts
(Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and
Michael Collins). Armstrong was the first man to step on the moon. He was followed by astronaut Aldrin. They collected soil samples. The third astronaut Collins
stayed in the spacecraft.
When the first astronauts landed on the moon they found a landscape of cliffs and plains completely covered in many places by a fine white dust.
Astronauts of Apollo-11 placed a memorial plaque on the moon. It says, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
The Apollo program was over in 1972. Scientists got a lot of information about the moon from the soil samples which were collected by three of them. This first landing on the moon was followed by many more successful missions to the moon.
Mathura Arunthavam (15 years)
Vembadi Girls’ High School, Jaffna
