Google has celebrated NASA’s 50th anniversary of the Apollo programme, the historic effort that sent US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin who became the first humans ever to land on the moon, with a doodle video on Friday.
The doodle video is in the voice of Command Module Pilot (CMP) Michael Collins who remained aboard the command module in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon.
As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.
An estimated one million people gathered on the beaches of central Florida to witness the launch of Apollo 11 first-hand, while more than 500 million people around the world watched the event live on television, NASA said in a statement.
The two astronauts spent more than 21 hours on the lunar surface deploying scientific experiments and gathering samples before returning to the orbiting command module, piloted by Collins.
For the first time in half a century, NASA’s “Artemis” missions will allow scientists and engineers to examine the lunar surface from up close.