Fifty years after a mighty rocket set off from Florida carrying the first humans to the Moon, a veteran of the Apollo 11 crew returned to its fabled launch pad Tuesday to commemorate “one giant leap” that became a defining moment in human history. “We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders, we knew that everyone would be looking at us, friend or foe,” command module pilot Michael Collins said from the Kennedy Space Center. He and Buzz Aldrin, who piloted the module that landed on the Moon’s surface, are the two surviving members from the mission that would change the way humanity saw its place in the universe. Their commander Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, died in 2012 aged 82. The spacecraft took four days to reach the Moon, before the module known as the “Eagle” — whence the iconic phrase “the Eagle has landed” — touched the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fifty years after a mighty rocket set off from Florida carrying the first humans to the Moon, a veteran of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n