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54 Scientific American, July 2019

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: NASA (

Aldrin; lunar module and Armstrong;

crewmates

); GETTY IMAGES

(mission control

)

ALDRIN hops down

the ladder of the Apollo 11

lunar module Eagle to step

on the moon’s surface for

the first time.

NEIL ARMSTRONG’S

shadow is visible in this

photo he took of the lunar

module in the distance.

▲ GEORGE M. LOW, manager of the
Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, and other
mission controllers monitor their consoles
at the Mission Operations Control Room.

space, the astronauts escaped Earth orbit, traveled to lunar orbit, then undocked part of their spacecraft and

steered it down for a soft impact on an alien land. Perhaps even more impressive, after taking a walk around,

they climbed back in their lunar lander, launched off the surface of another planetary body (another first),

rejoined the command module orbiting roughly 60 miles above the lunar surface, and then flew back to

Earth, splashing down safely in the Pacific Ocean two days later.

After that heady feat, dreamers worldwide imagined it would be only a hop, skip and jump to colonies on

the moon and vacations on Mars. Yet no human has been back to the lunar surface since the last Apollo

astronaut left it in 1972, and plans to put people on Mars or anywhere else in the solar system are barely

more defined than they were back then. It seems that every subsequent president promises to send another

crew to the moon, but by now those calls have begun to sound like fanciful, unfeasible optimism. When Vice

President Mike Pence announced in March that the Trump administration wants to land astronauts on the

ARMSTRONG waves as he and his crew-

mates head to the launchpad on July 16, 1969.