Apollo 16
April 21, 1972
John Young and Charles Duke are on the surface of the Descartes Highlands, and the science is already surprising. The region was supposed to be volcanic, different from the mare sites. The first samples suggest it isn't. The Moon keeps teaching us by being different from what we expected.
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Apollo 15
July 31, 1971
Dave Scott drove the Lunar Rover on the Moon today and the television camera on the rover broadcast it live. I watched the Moon scroll past — the mountains, the craters, the edge of Hadley Rille — from my living room. Scott's voice narrating the drive. I will never get…
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Apollo 14
February 6, 1971
At the end of the second moonwalk, Alan Shepard pulled a makeshift 6-iron head from his suit pocket, attached it to a sample-collection rod, and hit two golf balls on the Moon. He shanked the first one. He caught the second one clean. "Miles and miles," he said. I laughed…
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Apollo 12
November 19, 1969
Pete Conrad landed the LM within 200 meters of Surveyor 3 — a precision landing NASA could barely believe. Then he stepped onto the Moon and said exactly what he'd bet a journalist he would say. "Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a…
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Apollo 11
July 21, 1969
Neil Armstrong descended the ladder of the Eagle at 10:56 PM Eastern and stepped onto the Moon. His first words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Buzz Aldrin followed twenty minutes later. I watched on television, the picture grainy and miraculous, and I kept thinking:…
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