To the Moon!

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Neil Armstrong led NASA's historic Apollo 11 Moon landing 50 years ago today.

He and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first of 12 Americans to set foot on the moon.

Apollo 11 was launched into space on July 16, 1969 and just four days later (July 20th), they landed on the Lunar surface.

Command Module Pilot Michael Collins was also part of Apollo 11, but he's largely forgotten today, despite playing a very critical part in that mission.

So are most of the other 10 astronauts who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972.

I had no idea there had been that many Americans who'd set foot on the moon. So, in remembering the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, we should also remember the others who followed.

There were six Apollo moon landings, Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 & 17. Apollo 13's Lunar landing was aborted following a Service Module oxygen tank exploding en route to the Moon. The flight flew past the Moon, then embarked on a free-return trajectory, returning the entire crew safely to earth.

The 12 astronauts who walked on the Moon were, in order; Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin & Pete Conrad, Alan Bean & Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott and James Irwin, John Young, Charles Duke, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

Alan Shepherd, who'd been the first man into space as a Mercury astronaut on May 5th, 1961, was the ONLY Mercury program astronaut to set foot on the moon. He did that 10 years later, in December of 1971.

Alan Shepard died on July 21st, 1998.

Eugene Cernan was the 11th man to set foot on the moon, but the LAST to leave the lunar surface at the end of the third and final moonwalk with Harrison Schmitt, from Apollo 17, on December 14th, 1972.

He died January 16th, 2017 at age 82.
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