In 1969 man first set foot upon the moon with the NASA Apollo 11 program.
I remember it well at the time I was at school and we children had been given a free day off school, in order to watch this remarkable event at home on the television, as it unfolded - live in real time of man landing on the moon.
I remember looking at the moon that same night, I could barely believe that it was happening. The moon looked exactly the same to me, yet I now knew that human beings had actually walked on that moon. That thought was awesome!
However, as I watched the TV pictures I was quite disappointed to see that the moon looked quite boring, dull, dusty and dark. The moon had been formed when a rock smashed into earth but even so i had half expected it to have contained some form of organic structures mountains or plants on it or something yet it only seemed to be covered in lots of rocks and dust.
I have since learned that the Lunar surface contains an array of compounds made of minerals like olivine and pyroxene, which are made up of magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen atoms. But it also includes Gold, Silver and mercury ! according to PBS.9( Jul 2019)
The reactions of the astronauts was very interesting, as they interacted with this dusty new environment, it was good to hear their conversations as they spoke their thoughts out aloud.
I heard that memorable line by Neil Armstrong one of the astronauts.
"One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind"
In the evening as I wrote my essay for school about man's journey to the moon, I felt like it had been all our journeys, because mankind had witnessed and experienced it for themselves through the eyes of the astronauts on TV.
Now I believe that they are going to return again to the moon, for another mission. The race is back on again !
Ref- Google