Last week saw the 50th anniversary of the first man to descend on the surface of the moon. The discovery changed the world's view of the universe. This exciting moment united the American nation, which was divided by the Vietnam War, and strengthened the US position with the former Soviet Union in their race to conquer space. In fact, nearly 600 million people around the world saw amazing footage of a giant jump of US astronaut Neil Armstrong, who set foot for the first time on the moon, By the arrival of man l J this planet.
A critical moment
The first time Armstrong could not land on the moon because the gas was running out of his vehicle. That was on July 20, 1969. At that moment Armstrong and his astronaut, Edwin Aldrin, were landing on the moon, but things were getting worse. An alarm sounded at first to indicate something strange was in the spacecraft and then heard another alarm after a few seconds of tension. Engineers at the Ground Task Control Center in Houston thought that a catastrophic moment was approaching. The landing computer on the spacecraft "There was an overload," said Charles Duke Junior, the official in charge of official communication with the Earth's space capsule. The message was sent to the astronauts, saying "Follow." Then the fuel problem came. When the lunar module approached the landing site, Calm sea, "Armstrong said he had to make an adjustment At the landing site. While the maps appear on the vehicle flat, there were rocks the size of cars along a field of drilling. Armstrong was forced to look for another place where safe landing could be done manually, but that would consume more precious fuel.
Tension was at its peak in Houston, and all the ground crew remained silent as if on their heads. "You can hear the sound of a pin falling" in a room with about 100 people, "said Jerry Griffin, director of aviation. The task watchers listened to Aldrin's words as he talked about the speed and range of the spacecraft. The warning came from Houston «60 seconds left», where this warning indicates the amount of time left for astronauts to mandatory abortion for landing due to the depletion of fuel. The spacecraft was still about 100 feet above the moon. The next warning came "30 seconds left." "It seemed to us that those few seconds were moving quickly," Griffin says.
Historical moment
When Aldrin's voice came across the radio: "falling smoothly," he touched a probe mounted on one of the console's feet, the moon's surface. They are a few crew members in the control center on the ground raising their fists a sign of ecstasy and nail, but the chief flight officer, Jane Crans, called on everyone to remain calm. There is still work to do and no official confirmation from astronauts of final landing. Then Armstrong's voice came over the radio: "To Houston, the eagle has fallen." The room burst into cheers and applause.
That night in Houston, Griffin looked at half the moon shining in a blue sky. "We have done it," he recalls. "There are men sitting on this thing that is there."
Fifty years ago, the United States was able to do the impossible. The first person landed on the moon, which took hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars, but NASA has achieved one of the greatest achievements in human history. Today, as all US states celebrate the anniversary of Apollo 11 space mission, all the peoples of the world are once again contemplating future space missions, several space agencies planning trips to the moon, others looking further, wanting to travel to Mars.
The moon is inspiring to man
Since the dawn of human history, the Moon has occupied a central position in our consciousness. Unlike the bodies of other planets, the Moon appears more than a brick of light in the sky, and invites us to think of it as another world. In a Buddhist mythology, a self-sacrificing rabbit is honored to feed a hungry priest, whose image is placed above the moon for all to see.
The moon god Khonsu, according to the ancient Egyptian belief, guards those who travel at night. In ancient China, the moon represents a renewal of life. Man has long viewed the moon as an ideal celestial body, and its dark signs inspire people to myths and other stories. But the meticulous examination by Galileo Galilei of the moon revealed its flaws, and the human view took on a new direction: an object worthy of scientific study.
The challenge is the underlying motivation
"We've got hypotheses and speculation about the conditions of the moon, the temperature, and whether there's something going on there," says Alice Gorman, an expert in space archeology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. As the Moon's study progressed from the ground, the door opened to more questions and puzzles. Despite the long-term fascination of the Moon and the scientific potential to send a person there, NASA targeted the planetary body for another reason, the challenge. And the former Soviet Union in a global struggle to dominate everything, and space emerged as one of the most visible battlefields of battle in this existential battle.
"This was a war, but by other means," says former NASA chief astronomer and author of The Apollo Legacy, the United States has already been behind the space race since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957. But these The nation that landed on the moon has subsequently gained an important advantage in its quest to lead the world towards the future. That is what lies behind the then-US president, John F. Kennedy, who called on the nation to do so. "We chose to go to the moon," he said in a speech at Rice University in Houston in 1962. "We chose to go to the moon in this decade, and we do it not because it is easy, but because it is difficult."
It was hard work. Washington pumped more than 4 percent of NASA's federal budget in the early years of the Apollo program. Today, by comparison, the agency's budget represents about 0.5% of the federal budget. The project cost $ 25 billion and employs 400,000 people, many of whom rarely saw their families because they worked long hours. Three astronauts died when a fire broke out in their spacecraft during the pre-launch test. They were supposed to be among the first team From the Apollo program crew, however, before the end of the contract, Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag on the moon.
"It was a convincing event in the minds of people around the world that the Soviets were not the future of the world," says NASA space analyst and former space shuttle engineer James Oberg. "The United States did not claim the moon - it was only symbolic - and many members of the community Of the human landing on the moon as a collective human achievement. The Soviets publicly hailed it as "a huge leap for humanity" as well, but, as Oberg says, they have suffered a bitter loss.
The first death outside the globe
The Soviet space program witnessed the first such death in space in 1971, when astronauts Georgi Dubrovolski, Viktor Patsayev and Vladislav Volkov died on their return to Earth from the Saliot I space station.
The crew landed in an ideal descent, but the team felt astonished when they found the crew of three men sitting in their seats, dead, with dark blue spots on their faces and blood falling from their ears and noses.
An investigation showed that ventilation valves had been disrupted, astronauts had been suffocated, and pressure had put the crew in trouble, the only pioneers who had faced such a fate. They died within seconds of 168 kilometers (104 miles) of land, making them the only humans who die outside the globe.
The first person to fly around the earth
Soviet astronaut Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was the first man to fly into space. He traveled around the Earth on more than one orbit in the Soviet Vostok, where his journey on April 12, 1961, took 108 minutes. After this journey Gagarin became a cultural and national hero in the Soviet Union. Less than seven years after his mission in making history, Gagarin died in a plane crash at the age of 38. His remains were buried in the Kremlin in Moscow, where the great are buried. Even today, despite the passage of more than six decades on this historic journey, the Gagarin tour is celebrated extensively in the Russian space museums, with many artifacts and statues on display in his honor, and part of his spacecraft is displayed at the RKI Energia Museum .
Gagarin's trip came at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for technical excellence in space. The Soviet Union had already sent its first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into space in October 1957. Before Gagarin's mission, the Soviets sent a pilot into space using a prototype «Vostok» space. During this trip, they sent a life-size doll called Ivan Ivanovich and a dog called Zvezdushka into space. After this pilot voyage, the Soviets considered the ship suitable for transporting man into space.
Gagarin, the third of four children, was born on March 9, 1934, in a small village 100 miles from Moscow. When he was a teenager, he saw a Russian Yak fighter plane landing near his home. He seemed to be in love with flying since then. When he was offered an opportunity to join an airline club years later, he eagerly accepted it and made his first solo flight in 1955. After that, Only a few years ago he applied for an appointment and was trained as an astronaut.
Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong sits in the space capsule. August
• 50 years ago America was able to do the impossible, as the first person landed on the moon. It took hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars, but NASA has achieved one of the greatest achievements in human history.