Line up for 50th anniversary of moon landing

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) NASA will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon mission and look to the future of exploration on the Moon and Mars with a live, two-hour television broadcast Friday, July 19, and partner-led events taking place across the country from July 16 through July 20. On July 16, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a journey to the Moon and into history. Four days later, while Collins orbited the Moon in the command module, Armstrong and Aldrin landed Apollo 11’s lunar module, Eagle, on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, becoming the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface. This year, NASA’s Giant Leaps: Past and Future will air 1 to 3 p.m. EDT July 19 on NASA TV and the agency’s website, and will be simulcast on the Discovery Science Channel. Hosted from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center, the show will salute the heroes of Apollo and discuss the agency’s future plans, with segments at: The National Mall in Washington NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, including the newly restored Apollo Mission Control Operations Room and Space Center Houston, Johnson’s official visitors center The U.S. Space & Rocket Center near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama Neil Armstrong’s hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio The Apollo 11 command module on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle The show also will feature slices of Americana at other anniversary celebrations around the country. At 3 p.m., NASA TV will air a special program, STEM Forward to the Moon, which will feature kids participating in Moon landing simulations at four partner museums across the nation: Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas Saint Louis Science Center in St. Louis Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey, California Arizona Science Center in Phoenix NASA also will bring Apollo 50th anniversary participants together to take part in a virtual engineering design challenge on social media. Along with each of its museum partners, NASA invites the public to help build a component of NASA’s return to the Moon using simple household materials. For more information, visit: https://spacestem.nasa.gov/ For more information about NASA’s Apollo 11 mission and a list of other events taking place across the country, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/