INTERNATIONAL MOON DAY 2023

International Moon Day is an annual day dedicated to the Earth’s one and only natural satellite, the Moon. The day is celebrated every year on the 20th of July, which is the day when astronauts NEIL ARMSTRONG and BUZZ ALDRIN set foot for the very first time on the moon in 1969. The day is all about the success of APOLLO 11 MISSION spreading knowledge among the people about the MOON and astronomy.

The idea for the mission to send astronauts to the moon started when President Kennedy appealed to a special joint session of Congress in 1961, stating “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

July 1969! It's a little over eight years since the flights of Gagarin and Shepard, followed quickly by President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon before the decade is out. It is only seven months since NASA made a bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the way to the moon on the first manned flight of the massive Saturn V rocket.

At 9:32 AM EDT, the engines fire, and Apollo 11 clears the tower. About 12 minutes later, the crew is in Earth orbit. After one and a half orbits, Apollo 11 gets a "go" for what mission controllers call "Translunar Injection" - in other words, it's time to head for the moon. Three days later the crew is in lunar orbit. A day after that, Armstrong and Aldrin climb into the lunar module Eagle and begin the descent, while Collins orbits in the command module Columbia.

When the lunar module lands at 4:17 PM EDT, only 30 seconds of fuel remain. Armstrong radios "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Mission control erupts in celebration as the tension breaks and a controller tells the crew "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again."

Armstrong will later confirm that landing was his biggest concern, saying "the unknowns were rampant," and "there were just a thousand things to worry about."

At 10:56 PM EDT Armstrong is ready to plant the first human foot on another world. With more than half a billion people watching on television, he climbs down the ladder and proclaims: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Aldrin joins him shortly, and offers a simple but powerful description of the lunar surface: "magnificent desolation." They explore the surface for two and a half hours, collecting samples and taking photographs.

They leave behind an American flag, a patch honoring the fallen Apollo 1 crew, and a plaque on one of Eagle's legs. It reads, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

Armstrong and Aldrin blast off and dock with Collins in Columbia. Collins later says that "for the first time," he "really felt that we were going to carry this thing off."

The crew splashes down off Hawaii on July 24. Kennedy's challenge has been met. Men from Earth have walked on the moon and returned safely home.

In an interview years later, Armstrong praises the "hundreds of thousands" of people behind the project. "Every guy that's setting up the tests, cranking the torque wrench, and so on, is saying, man or woman, 'If anything goes wrong here, it's not going to be my fault."

In a post-flight press conference, Armstrong calls the flight "a beginning of a new age," while Collins talks about future journeys to Mars.

Over the next three and a half years, 10 astronauts will follow in their footsteps. Gene Cernan, commander of the last Apollo mission leaves the lunar surface with these words: "We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind."

International Moon Day has a unique theme every year. International Moon Day 2023 will be celebrated based on the theme “Beginning the New Lunar Journey for Humanity”.

Here are some facts about MOON

1.????Moon orbits the Earth at the speed of 2300 miles per hour.

2.????Till now, 12 men have walked on the moon- Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, Charles “Pete” Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, David R. Scott, James B. Irwin, John W. Young, Charles M. Duke, Eugene Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt.

3.????Weight of the human body decreases by 16.5% on the moon.

4.????The mass of the moon is 73,476,730,924,573,500,000,000 kg, which is about 1.2% of Earth’s mass.

5.????We always see the same face of the moon from Earth because the moon is always in synchronous rotation with Earth.

6.????On December 9, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 76/76 on "International cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space" stating that July 20 will be observed every year as International Moon Day.

7.????20th July 2022 marks the first-ever observance of International Moon Day.

?

Source of the information: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html

?