‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’: US celebrates 50th anniversary of moon landing

A moonstruck nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of humanity’s first footsteps on another world Saturday, gathering in record heat at races and other festivities to commemorate Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s “giant leap.”

At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, cars were backed up for miles outside the visitor complex at opening time. In Armstrong’s hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, nearly 2,000 runners competed in “Run to the Moon” races.

“We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most historic event in my lifetime, maybe in anybody’s lifetime, the landing on the moon,” said 10K runner Robert Rocco, 54, of Centerville, Ohio. “The ’60s were very turbulent. But that one bright wonderful moment was the space program.”

In New Mexico, White Sands National Monument held a series of family-friendly events to commentate the anniversary — including two screenings of the new, award-winning documentary, Apollo 11.

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The Eagle lunar lander, carrying Armstrong and Aldrin, landed on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969. Armstrong was the first one out, proclaiming for the ages: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Millions on Earth listened to him on TV or radio and heard it.

But after returning from space, Armstrong said that wasn’t what he had planned to say. He said there was a lost word in his famous one-liner from the moon: “That’s one small step for ‘a’ man.” It’s just that people just didn’t hear it.”

During a 30th anniversary gathering in 1999, the Apollo 11 commander acknowledged that he didn’t hear himself say it either when he listened to the transmission from the July 20, 1969, moon landing.

“The ‘a’ was intended,” Armstrong said. “I thought I said it. I can’t hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on Earth, so I’ll be happy if you just put it in parentheses.”

While it seems no one heard the “a,” some research backs Armstrong. In 2006, a computer analysis of sound waves found evidence that Armstrong said what he said he said. NASA has also stood by the moonwalker.

Armstrong, who died in 2012 at age 82, said he came up with the statement himself. In a 2001 NASA oral history, he said NASA discouraged coaching astronauts, a position reflected in a NASA memo. It cited how “the truest emotion … is what the explorer feels within himself.”

“I thought about it after landing,” Armstrong said about his famous line. “And because we had a lot of other things to do, it was not something that I really concentrated on, but just something that was kind of passing around subliminally or in the background. But it, you know, was a pretty simple statement, talking about stepping off something. Why, it wasn’t a very complex thing. It was what it was.”

On Saturday, the 89-year-old Aldrin and Armstrong’s son, Rick, traveled with Vice President Mike Pence to Florida to visit the Apollo 11 launch pad and the building where the astronauts suited up for liftoff on July 16, 1969, now known as the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building.

In New York City, organizers moved a moon-landing party from Times Square into a hotel because of the heat wave. Youngsters joined former space shuttle astronaut Winston Scott there, as a giant screen showed the Saturn V rocket lifting off with the Apollo 11 crew in 1969.

Countdowns were planned across the country at the exact moment of the Eagle’s landing on the Sea of Tranquility — 4:17 p.m. EDT — and Armstrong’s momentous step onto the lunar surface at 10:56 p.m. EDT. The powdered orange drink Tang was back in vogue for the toasts, along with MoonPies, including a 55-pound (25-kilogram), 45,000-calorie MoonPie at Kennedy’s One Giant Leap bash.

Halfway around the world in the 100-degree heat of Kazakhstan, meanwhile, an American, Italian and Russian boarded a Russian rocket for their own liftoff to the International Space Station. Only one of the three — cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov — was alive at the time of Apollo 11. The three already living on the space station also were born long after the moon landings.

“Few moments in our American story spark more pride than the Apollo 11 mission,” President Donald Trump said Saturday in a Space Exploration Day message. His statement reiterated the goal of sending astronauts back to the moon within five years and taking “the next giant leap — sending Americans to Mars.”

Aldrin and Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins, 88, met with Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, with Collins pushing for a direct mission to Mars and skipping the moon, and Aldrin expressing dismay at the past few decades of human space exploration.