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Forty-nine years ago today, humans were posing for the first time a world beyond Earth – and by that time the 50th anniversary of the landing Apollo 11 lunar happen, one year ago
Today, NASA 's myriad of Twitter accounts are buzzing with #NationalMoonDay shout – outs, and the site' s Web site. Spatial agency is filled with links to Apollo 11.
You can bet that the # Apollo50 observatories next year will have a much higher profile. Even the Seattle Museum of Flight launches into action: Apollo 11 artifacts loaned by the Smithsonian, including the Columbia Command Module, will be on display from next April. and will continue until the 50th anniversary
. About glories of the past: We should witness an increase in missions on the moon, partly because of the Trump administration 's initiative for lunar exploration and colonization.
This week, NASA has published a list of more than two dozen companies that are interested in a NASA program to support the delivery of commercial payloads to the lunar surface
The list includes heavyweights from the commercial space effort (Aerojet Rocketdyne, Origin Blue, Lockheed Martin, ATK's Northrop Grumman / Orbitale, Sierra Nevada Corp., SpaceX and United Launch Alliance) as well as veterans scrappier off the ground. former XPRIZE competitions (Astrobotic, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express, PTScientists, TeamIndus).
There is even a Seattle company that has expressed interest in the lunar race: Spaceflight Industries, which has signed contracts for launch logistics with several of these projects.
Another Google Lunar X Prize veteran, SpaceIL, is preparing for the launch. a lander to the moon at the end of the year on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The details of the mission were insufficient, but sources privately say that preparations are well underway.
China, meanwhile, is preparing two robotic moon landing missions: Chang-e-4 is expected to be launched later this year. goal to make the first soft landing on the far side of the moon. Chang-e-5, whose launch is scheduled in 2019, aims to bring back about four pounds of rocks and earth from the back of the moon to the Earth to be studied.
<h4 class = "web-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0 em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = " Exclusive: : Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11 shares his lunar vision "data-reactid =" 33 "> Exclusive: : Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin shares his vision of the moon
L & # 39; India is also planning to send an orbiter, a lander and a six – wheeled rover to the moon by the end of the year. This is part of the Chandrayaan-2 Indian Mission, which follows the successful mission of the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter from 2008 to 2009.
Such lunar missions are a more significant tribute to the "moon" or "moon" orbit. Apollo's legacy as museum artifacts. But if that is the story of the space you are looking for, there are others to look forward to in the coming months.
A big budget film based on the definitive biography of Commander Neil Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong, "First Man," to be published in October. (It will be presented for the first time next month at the Venice Film Festival.) And an upcoming documentary titled "Apollo 11" takes advantage of a movie that shows the actual events of 49 years ago in high resolution.
You may even own a piece of history: Heritage Auctions is about to start selling more than 2,000 items from the Armstrong family estate. "There will be objects that will make you think, objects that will make you laugh, and objects that will make you scratch your head," said Mark Armstrong, one of the sons of the deceased astronaut, in a communiqué
. and everything related to Apollo 11 and the history of space, check out Robert Z. Pearlman's cover on CollectSpace.
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