Apollo 11, 50 Years Later

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Apollo 11's Lunar Module reached Mare Tranquillitatis fifty years ago this month. I remember hearing Neil A. Armstrong announce the landing site's name: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

A few hours later, Armstrong opened the Lunar Module's MESA — a storage locker built into the lander's side.

A television camera in the MESA showed us Armstrong's, and humanity's, first step onto another world.

Back on Earth, one out of every five people were watching: at home, in pubs, at cafes, in New York's Central Park and at shop windows. Pope St. Paul VI watched at the Castle Gandolfo observatory....

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