One giant leap: 50 years ago, humanity's first steps on the Moon

HOUSTON -- "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind": it was with these words that Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon 50 years ago, an occasion celebrated by space enthusiasts globally Saturday.

The era-defining event was watched by more than half a billion people around the world, and represented one of humanity's greatest achievements.

In the US, its 50th anniversary has revived public enthusiasm for crewed space flight, as NASA charts out new missions to the Moon and on to Mars.

At 4:18 p.m. ET on July 20, 1969, the lunar module carrying Armstrong and crewmate Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Sea of Tranquility, following a four-day journey.

NASA replayed the original CBS footage online. 

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," Armstrong said.

A little over six hours later, at 10:56 p.m. ET, Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface and uttered his immortal words -- which he later said he thought about during the flight and prior to exiting Eagle.

Aldrin followed about 20 minutes later, exclaiming: "Magnificent desolation."

The pair spent about two-and-a-half hours on the surface, carrying out scientific experiments and collecting samples. 

"We had the problem of the five-year-old boy in a candy store," Armstrong would later go on to say. "There are just too many interesting things to do."

In Houston on Saturday night, thousands of space enthusiasts descended upon the visitor area of the NASA Johnson Space Center for a countdown to the "Moonversary," and watched a giant screen that replayed the iconic moments, before fireworks lit up the sky.

NASA has been in overdrive for several weeks to mark the anniversary, with exhibits and events around the country, including projecting the giant Saturn V rocket and clips from the mission on the Washington Monument.

"Looking back, landing on the moon wasn't just our job, it was a historic opportunity to prove to the world America's can-do spirit," Aldrin, 89, tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech from Cape Canaveral, from where Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins, the third crew member, took off.

All three men were born in 1930, and Armstrong died in 2012.

"Apollo 11 is the only event in the 20th century that stands a chance of being widely remembered in the 30th century," Pence said.

NASA has declared its intention to return to the Moon by 2024 under the Artemis program -- the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology -- and this time place the first woman on its surface.

It plans to establish a lunar orbiting platform, called a "Gateway," studying how living organisms react to the radiation and microgravity of a deep space environment over a long period, as it looks ahead to a crewed Mars mission in the 2030s.

Experts doubt that the space agency can meet its current goals on time. None of the key elements -- the rocket, crew capsule, lander, or orbital station -- are yet ready.

Pence used the occasion to announce that the Orion crew capsule had now been assembled, "a critical milestone."

According to a release by maker Lockheed Martin, it needs several months more of testing before it is delivered for launch processing in early 2020.

'I've been there!'

In an interview with Fox News, Aldrin lamented the lack of progress in human space exploration since the Apollo program, which ended in 1972.

He also called for global cooperation to achieve humanity's next steps on the Moon and Mars.

"It would not be at all helpful to be competing for the Moon or Mars, that's very wasteful," he said.

Collins too is keen for crewed missions sooner rather than later, and has advocated for the US to go "direct to Mars" rather than returning to the Moon first.

Asked on Saturday if he thinks much about the events of 50 years ago, he told Fox News: "Not very often."

"I lead a quiet life. I'll be walking along down my street at night, when it's starting to get dark and I sense something over my right shoulder and I look up and see that little silver sliver up there and think, 'Oh that's the Moon! I've been there!'"

Uncertain future

The White House, meanwhile, issued a statement announcing it was "committed to reestablishing our Nation's dominance and leadership in space for centuries to come."

Both presidents George HW Bush and his son George W. Bush made similar promises but financial constraints stopped their vision from being realized. 

The future of Artemis rests therefore on the willingness of Congress to substantially increase NASA's current budget of $21 billion -- and possibly on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Astronauts hailed as heroes 50 years after historic moon landing

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- Capping a week of celebrations over the historic Apollo 11 mission, Vice President Mike Pence joined astronaut Buzz Aldrin on Saturday at the launch pad in Florida that sent the moonwalker and his two crew mates to space for humankind's first steps on the lunar surface 50 years ago.

Pence joined NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon behind his fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing that enthralled people around the world in 1969.

"If Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins are not heroes, then there are no heroes," Pence told a crowd of dozens of space industry executives and NASA staff in the Operations and Checkout building, the 58-foot-tall chamber that once housed the Apollo 11 command module for testing. "We honor these men today, and America will always honor our Apollo astronauts."

Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died in 2012 at age 82. Collins, the command module pilot who stayed in lunar orbit while Aldrin and Armstrong hopped around the lunar surface collecting samples, did not attend the ceremony. Aldrin is 89 and Collins 88.

"Apollo 11 is the only event in the 20th century that stands a chance of being widely remembered in the 30th century," Pence said.

The building is now home to NASA's Orion crew capsule, the spacecraft designed to carry astronauts back to the moon by 2024 in what Bridenstine calls the Artemis program, named after the Greek goddess and twin sister of Apollo. The capsule on deck for the program's first operational mission in 2022 was sitting beside the stage.

"The Orion is in the same cell as where Apollo was stacked 50 years ago. So we've come full circle," said Glenn Chin, deputy manager at the Orion productions operations office.

Pence, chairing the White House's National Space Council, announced in March an accelerated schedule for NASA to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, halving the U.S. space agency's previous timeline to get there by 2028 and requesting from Congress a $1.6 billion boost to NASA's fiscal 2020 budget request.

"The American space program is coming back. It's coming back with a vengeance," Bridenstine said at Saturday's ceremony. "We all love Apollo. But in the Artemis program we go to the moon sustainably, and this time we have a very diverse, highly qualified astronaut corps that includes women."

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday indicated he was not interested in a mission going back to the moon, despite his administration's plans for it. Trump instead repeated his interest in a NASA mission that would take astronauts directly to Mars, a vastly more challenging and costly endeavor.

"To get to Mars, you have to land on the moon, they say. Any way of going directly without landing on the moon? Is that a possibility?" the Republican president asked Bridenstine during an event in the White House Oval Office.

Bridenstine responded, "Well, we need to use the moon as a proving ground, because when we go to Mars, we're going to have to be there for a long period of time, so we need to learn how to live and work on another world." But Collins, attending the event, said he favored going directly to Mars.

The Artemis program's objective is to conduct a series of manned and unmanned missions to the moon, using its surface as a proving ground for technologies that could lay the ground work for the longer and more complex missions to Mars as soon as 2033, Bridenstine has said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'One giant leap': US marks Apollo mission 50 years on

CAPE CANAVERAL - Fifty years after a mighty rocket set off from Florida carrying the first humans to the Moon, a veteran of the Apollo 11 crew returned to its fabled launch pad Tuesday to commemorate "one giant leap" that became a defining moment in human history.

"We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders, we knew that everyone would be looking at us, friend or foe," command module pilot Michael Collins said from the Kennedy Space Center.

He and Buzz Aldrin, who piloted the module that landed on the Moon's surface, are the two surviving members from the mission that would change the way humanity saw its place in the universe.

Their commander Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, died in 2012 aged 82.

The spacecraft took 4 days to reach the Moon, before the module known as the "Eagle" -- whence the iconic phrase "the Eagle has landed" -- touched the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. 

Armstrong emerged a few hours later, descending to the foot of the ladder, as he uttered the immortal line: "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command module Columbia, their only means of returning to Earth.

"I always think of a flight to the Moon as being a long and fragile daisy chain of events," the 88-year-old said at launch pad 39A, at the first of many events planned across the week.

These include the return of Armstrong's suit to the Air and Space Museum in Washington after more than a decade of restoration work.

The Washington Monument will be lit up between July 16 and 18 with a life-size, 363-foot (111-meter) projection of the colossal Saturn V rocket built by ex-Nazi Wernher Von Braun.

Collins described how the mission was broken into discrete goals such as breaking free of the Earth's gravity or slowing down for lunar orbit.

"The flight was a question of being under tension, worrying about what's coming next. What do I have to do now to keep this daisy chain intact?"

Unlike Collins, Aldrin has remained relatively elusive and did not participate at Tuesday's launchpad event. 

Aging but active on Twitter, and often seen in stars-and-stripes socks or ties, the 89-year-old has faced health scares and family feuds, culminating in a court case over finances, which was settled in March.

He is the second of 12 men to have set foot on the Moon, only four of whom are still alive.

COFFEE AND MUSIC 

Collins has been fielding questions for half a century about whether he felt lonely or left out.

"I was always asked wasn't I the loneliest person in the whole lonely history of the whole lonely solar system when I was by myself in that lonely orbit?" he said. "And the answer was 'No, I felt fine!'

"I would enjoy a perfectly enjoyable hot coffee, I had music if I wanted to. Good old Command Module Columbia had every facility that I needed, and it was plenty big and I really enjoyed my time by myself instead of being terribly lonely."

He added that he was offered the chance to be commander of Apollo 17, but turned it down because he did not want to spend another three years on the road, away from his wife and young children.

FIRST MAN, BEST SPOKESMAN? 

After the astronauts returned to Earth, they spent weeks in quarantine in case they had been infected by mysterious space illnesses (they had not), before embarking on a global tour.

Collins said that despite being an introvert, Armstrong was the best spokesman among the crew, making audiences feel like they had been along for the ride.

"He was very intelligent, he had an extremely wide background of knowledge, scientific knowledge, historical knowledge."

Neither the United States nor any other country has managed to return a human to the Moon since 1972, the year of the final Apollo mission.

President George H.W. Bush promised to do so in 1989, as did his son president George W. Bush in 2004, while pledging to also march forward to Mars.

But they both ran up against a Congress that wasn't inclined to fund the adventures, while the tide of public opinion had also turned since president John F. Kennedy roused the nation to action in the 1960s.

For his part, President Donald Trump has relaunched the race to re-conquer the Moon -- this time with the first woman -- and to journey onwards to Mars. 

But the deadlines (2024 and 2033 respectively) appear unrealistic and have caused turbulence within the space agency. 

Last week, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine fired his head of human space exploration, likely over disagreements over the Moon ultimatum. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket soars in debut test launch from Florida

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - The world's most powerful rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, roared into space through clear blue skies in its debut test flight on Tuesday from a Florida launch site where moon missions once began, in another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's private rocket company.

The 23-story-tall jumbo rocket, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster automobile into space as a mock payload, thundered off its launchpad in billowing clouds of steam and rocket exhaust at 2045 GMT (4:45 am in Manila) at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

Boisterous cheering could be heard from SpaceX workers at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, where a livestream feed of the event originated. Several hundred spectators packed a campground near Cocoa Beach, 5 miles (8 km) from the space center, to watch the blastoff.

Musk previously said one of the most critical points of the flight would come as two side boosters separated from the central rocket within three minutes of launch. That occurred seemingly without a hitch.

Then, capitalizing on cost-cutting reusable rocket technology pioneered by SpaceX, the two side boosters flew themselves back to Earth for safe simultaneous touchdowns on twin landing pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station about eight minutes after launch. The center booster was expected for a return landing on a drone ship floating at sea, but its fate was not immediately known.

Musk told reporters on the eve of the rocket's test flight that he would "consider it a win if it just clears the (launch) pad."

While the Falcon Heavy's initial performance appeared, by all accounts, to have been near flawless, it remained to be seen whether the upper stage of the vehicle and its payload would survive a six-hour "cruise" phase to high Earth orbit through the planet's radiation belts.

TURNING POINT 

The launch, so powerful that it shook the walls of the press trailer at the complex, was conducted from the same site used by NASA's towering Saturn 5 rockets to carry Apollo missions to the moon more than 40 years ago. SpaceX has said it aspires to send missions to Mars in the coming years.

The successful liftoff was a key turning point for Musk's privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, which stands to gain a new edge over the handful of rivals vying for lucrative contracts with NASA, satellite companies and the US military.

Falcon Heavy is designed to place up to 70 tons into standard low-Earth orbit at a cost of $90 million per launch. That is twice the lift capacity of the biggest existing rocket in America's space fleet - the Delta 4 Heavy of rival United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co - for about a fourth the cost.

The demonstration flight put the Falcon Heavy into the annals of spaceflight as the world's most powerful rocket in operation, with more lift capacity than any space vehicle to fly since NASA's Saturn 5, which was retired in 1973, or the Soviet-era Energia, which flew its last mission in 1988.

Propelled by 27 rocket engines, the Falcon Heavy packs more than 5 million pounds of thrust at launch, roughly three times the force of the Falcon 9 booster rocket that until now has been the workhorse of the SpaceX fleet. The new heavy-lift rocket is essentially constructed from three Falcon 9s harnessed together side by side.

Going along for the ride in a bit of playful cross-promotional space theater was the sleek red, electric-powered sports car from the assembly line of Musk's other transportation enterprise, Tesla Inc.

The Tesla Roadster is supposed to be sent into a virtually indefinite solar orbit, on a path taking it as far from Earth as Mars. Adding to the whimsy, SpaceX has planted a space-suited mannequin in the driver's seat of the convertible.

Whether the car makes it onto its planned trajectory will not be known before late on Tuesday, SpaceX said. The roadster, which carries a plaque inscribed with the names of more than 6,000 SpaceX employees, could instead end up in Earth orbit.

The launch followed an impressive run of successful paid missions - 20 in all since January 2017, when SpaceX returned to flight following a 2016 launchpad accident that destroyed a $62 million rocket and a $200 million Israeli communications satellite that it was to put into orbit two days later.

SpaceX had previously announced plans to eventually use the Falcon Heavy to launch two paying space tourists on a trip around the moon and back. Musk said on Monday he was now inclined to reserve that mission for development of an even more powerful SpaceX launch system, the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, which he said was proceeding more quickly than expected. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

3 aspiring Pinoy astronauts now at Kennedy Space Center

MANILA - The Philippine representatives to the international space training challenge at the AXE Apollo Space Academy (AASA) in Florida, USA are reportedly doing well, AXE Philippines brand manager Gem Laforteza said yesterday.

Filipino aspiring astronauts – Evan Ray Datuin, Chino Roque, and Ramil Santos – arrived in Orlando, Florida on Dec. 1 and joined contingents from 60 other countries for a briefing at the Rocket Garden.

The team started their actual space camp training by taking the LYNX Space Academy(r) tests at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday.

“We are very proud of Evan, Chino and Ramil for their outstanding performance at the AXE Apollo Space Academy training mission. They displayed utmost bravery, team spirit and enthusiasm required of astronauts today,” Laforteza said.

“Definitely, one of them will become the first Filipino astronaut as we are guaranteed a slot in AXE’s historic flight to space,” he added.

Santos and his pilot-trainer boarded an SIAI Marchetti SF260 plane for the air combat maneuver, including parabolic and spiral moves, multiple G-pulling and high and low yo-yos.

Santos’ trainer was reportedly impressed by his enthusiasm and the way he handled himself during the flight.

For the next two days, Santos will undergo the LYNX Space Academy(r) zero gravity training in a Boeing 727 that will give him the experience of being in space and the pressure of four times the force of gravity.

The Philippine AXE Apollo Team met with the AXE Apollo Space Academy judges and executives from Space Expedition Corp. whose shuttle will take 22 men and women to space.

The team is ready to face three daunting tasks at the Kennedy Space Center that will determine who among them will become the first Filipino astronaut.

These include tests on zero gravity, fighter jet activity and the G-Force simulator.

Meanwhile, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is aware of the team’s participation in the space training camp.

DOST assistant secretary Mon Liboro said the agency has yet to start efforts for the country to have its own space program.

Local scientists led by Custer Deocaris are lobbying for the passage of House Bill 6725 or the proposed Philippine Space Act of 2012 filed by the Agham party-list group.

Deocaris said the Philippines should not be left behind in the space studies, noting the benefits it could give to the country.

He said space studies could allow local scientists to pursue efforts that may lead to the Philippines’ launching of its own satellites in space.

Deocaris is coordinating with the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) for the establishment of an aerospace medicine center, the first in Southeast Asia.

The plan was announced during the 1st National Technology Forum on Aerospace Medicine and Biology on Oct. 6.

The proposed Aerodome will be built inside the LCP complex.

Deocaris’ students at the Technological Institute of the Philippines were tasked to design the state-of-the-art facility and to produce the needed equipment.

The facility will initially serve pilots, air and ground crew personnel from the military and civil aviation industry, and researchers in basic and applied space medicine.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com