VINTAGE INTERVIEW OF NEIL ARMSTRONG EXPLAINING OUTER SPACE AFTER THE MOON LANDING

While visiting Mars is currently one of NASA's top priorities, visiting the Moon was humanity's first great space travel aspiration. A fascinating video featuring Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon in 1969, discussing his revolutionary perspective on Earth and space has surfaced. There are only 12 people who have set foot on the moon as of 2024. Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" and the first Moon landing are notable for their cosmic and even global significance.

The astronaut and engineer remarks, "The Earth is quite beautiful from space," in a recently circulated 1970 BBC interview that has amassed 5.7 million views since Historic Vids uploaded it to X (formerly Twitter). Armstrong is asked to describe his distinct visual interpretation of the Sun, Earth, and space by the interviewer. Armstrong talks about how the clouds on our blue planet resemble lace and how space is "deep black." They also talk about flying through the Moon's shadow, the Sun's corona, and how Armstrong's helmet visor affected his vision in the video below.

The Apollo 11 lunar module, also known as the Eagle, was successfully landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, by Commander Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. 

Astronaut Neil Armstrong describes what space looks like from the surface of the moon pic.twitter.com/jNVW3sRnOk

— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) March 10, 2024

When the first human footprints were placed on the Moon, about 600 million people witnessed the event live. Armstrong characterised the surface as "very fine-grained... almost like a powder" at the time. 

Although only three people were able to travel in the Eagle, over 400,000 people contributed to the historic achievement. Among them was Katherine Johnson, a Black NASA mathematician who worked on the Apollo 11 mission trajectory and was one of the "human computers" in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures.

From 1961 to 1972, the Apollo program made six moon landings possible for humans. Visiting Mars and going back to the Moon are two of NASA's current space travel goals. NASA intends to launch an Artemis II crew on a lunar flyby mission in 2025—the first such mission in over 50 years.

The Artemis program aims to send the first woman and person of colour to the moon by 2026 and to have humans moonwalking once more.