Apollo 11 Essay

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Apollo 11 and the Moon Landing
Luke Huffman
APUSH Period 6
May 8, 2016

Apollo 11 's flight is one of the most significant achievements in history, not only for the United States of America but the world. Apollo 11 would make history by having a man land and walk on the moon. The United States was involved in a competition to be the first nation to send a man into space with the Soviet Union. After the Soviets first accomplished that, it became apparent that the primary goal of the "Space Race" would be to land a man on the moon first.
The Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States began when the Soviet Union launched a satellite into the earth’s orbit, called Sputnik, on October
The pilot of Gemini 10, Collins spent near an hour and a half outside of the craft on a spacewalk and became the first person to meet another spacecraft in orbit ("Apollo 11 Mission").
Apollo 11 was launched into space on the morning of July 16, 1969, at 9:32 a.m. by a Saturn 5 rocket from Launch Pad 39A. People lined the highway and crowded the beaches near the launch site. Also, millions, including President Richard Nixon watched the event on live television. NASA had been preparing for this mission for almost a decade, and now three men were safely entering the atmosphere on their way to the moon (“Apollo 11 Mission”). After traveling in space for nearly three days to reach the Moon, Apollo 11 rounded the Moon and entered lunar orbit on July 19, 1969, at 5:21 p.m. On the thirteenth orbit around the moon, the crew prepared for the lunar descent. The selected landing site, The Sea of Tranquility, was a relatively flat and smooth surface near the Moon 's
The Hornet then left for Hawaii to deliver the Command Module and Mobile Quarantine Facility. On August 10, 1969, the astronauts left quarantine after nearly three weeks (Barbree).
After the Apollo 11 astronauts had been released from quarantine, they were received ticker-tape parades in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on August 13, 1969. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins were presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a state dinner held in Los Angeles that same night (Barbree).
The August 13th celebration was followed by a 45-day "Giant Leap" tour that saw the astronauts visit twenty-five foreign countries and met with prominent world leaders. Several nations honored the Apollo 11 astronauts. Later that year, the astronauts went to Capitol Hill and presented Congress with United States Flags that had been with them on the moon. Not only did the Apollo 11 landing and Moonwalk mark a turning point in history that ended the space race, it also lead to technology advancements in rocketry, avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The world would never be the same after the Apollo 11 mission. The United States would become known as a superpower around the world and the lives of future generations would changed be

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