On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. The DIFF celebrates this great achievement. Learn about it on the Quicken Loans blog.
Look tonight at the moon. And think of Neil Armstrong, reluctant hero, the quiet man whose footsteps still rest upon the moon and in history.
Armstrong was a pilot first and foremost, and with the dust flying, craters looming and fuel running low on July 20, 1969, he never wavered. As everyone else on Earth held their breath on that day, his heartbeat never changed as he and co-pilot Buzz Aldrin made the first piloted landing upon the moon.
“Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong informed mission controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, with the restrained aplomb that marked his life. Two and a half hours later with the words, “That’s one small step for man. One g Read more →
As the vista on Mars gradually gets ever clearer, and the system checks continue to show that the rover is in good stead, the team behind Curiosity will be increasingly eager to stretch its legs wheels. The first trip might be just a cautious few meters, but plans for a more adventurous jaunt have just been revealed. The first location in Curiosity’s sights is an area referred to as Glenelg, which, based on initial pictures, offers three different geological characteristics, as well as potentially being an area where water used to be present. The site is only 1,300 feet (400 meters) from where the rover landed, but it could still take several weeks to get there. This is merely a quick dash compared to the next leg of its journey, which sees Curiosity heading out to an area called Mount Sharp — a large mound of layered rock which is hoped to contain visible geology potentially dating back millions of years. With seven kilometers (4.4 miles) lying between the rover and the mountain’s foothills, it’ll be a much longer journey, but one that could provide the first real evidence of the planet’s ability to host, or have hosted, life
