Page 1214 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 11 April 2018
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(d) report back to the Assembly by the last sitting day of 2018 on the ACT Government’s contribution to and support for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Next year, 2019, is the 50th anniversary of what is often said to the greatest technological achievement of humankind in the 20th century, if not of all time—the Apollo 11 lunar landing. For those old enough, the memory of watching those grainy black and white images of Neil Armstrong stepping down on to the surface of the moon was, for many of us, a powerful and defining moment of our lives. I remember I was in the early stages of primary school in Queensland, in Brisbane, at that time. Television was new to Queensland at that time and the school got in a television set especially for classes to sit around and watch the lunar landing. It was a very exciting moment on many fronts.
It is especially useful for us to be talking about this commemorative event, this important international as well as local event, as we approach heritage week because it is also reflective of our heritage. Apollo 11, of course, was the first spacecraft to land on the moon with people on board. The mission commander, Neil Armstrong, and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both form the USA, landed in the lunar module Eagle on 20 July 1969. Neil Armstrong then became the first human to step on to the lunar surface, six hours after landing, on 21 July. Buzz Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent about two and a quarter hours on the surface of the moon outside of the spacecraft and collected about 20 kilos of lunar material to bring back to earth. In fact, three pieces of the moon rock collected have been presented at various times to Australia. One is on display at the Tidbinbilla space tracking station, or its more formal title the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent just under a day on the moon surface, and the third member of the Apollo 11 crew, Michael Collins, piloted the command module, Columbia, alone in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon surface.
Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on 16 July and was the fifth manned mission of NASA’s Apollo program. All three astronauts returned safely to earth and landed in the Pacific Ocean on 24 July. The landing was also broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience.
Those famous words have echoed throughout the years since then, when Neil Armstrong stepped down on to the surface of the moon and said:
That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
That is something we have heard over and over on television broadcasts of the event since that time. Apollo 11 fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by the then US President John F Kennedy:
… before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.
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