20 July 2018•Update: 21 July 2018
By Sadik Kedir Abdu
ANKARA
“Tranquility Base here, The Eagle has landed” were the first-ever words heard from the moon, four days after the Apollo 11 spacecraft left the earth, touching down on July 20, 1969.
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins -- the latter two still with us -- thus earned a honored place in the annals of world history.
In a statement on Friday, U.S. space agency NASA announced a series of events to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the moon landing.
According to the 1969 moon shot report, the astronauts brought back to earth 47 lunar surface materials to be analyzed for further explorations.
"The thing that really surprised me was that everywhere we went people didn't say, 'Well you Americans finally did it’," Collins, now 87, said after the journey.
"They said, 'We did it.' All of us together, we did it. It was a wonderful sensation."
“The legacy of Apollo is if you set your mind to do something, get everybody together and everybody agrees we should accomplish it, and then we go ahead, it became something we all could be proud of," said Jim Lovell, the first person to fly in space four times.
"We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind," said the late Neil Armstrong, who on July 21 -- hours after the landing -- became the first human to set foot on the moon.
