Apollo 11 Moon Landing

By Isabelle Parker

On July 20th, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to ever set foot on the moon. Around 650 million people watched as Armstrong declared, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The landing was broadcast worldwide, and it became the most watched TV programming up to that date.

One of the reasons why this mission was so closely watched by the public was because of the space race, a competition between Cold War rivals America and the Soviet Union over who could safely land an astronaut on the moon first. It lasted from the 1950s- 1970s, and was made up of a series of events relating to space exploration. The Cold War was a war after World War 2 between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which many battles were fought, including the conquering of outer space. The space race began when America started planning to send a satellite to orbit the moon in 1954. The Soviet Union announced in 1957 that they had successfully launched a satellite, Sputnik, before America had. The Soviet Union then became the first to launch a living creature into space, which the launch of Sputnik 2 a month later. America saw this as competition, and NASA was founded in 1958 in order to further America's chances of space travel. What followed was a series of both successful and unsuccessful launches between the United States and the Soviet Union, which came to a climax in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced that he aimed to have NASA land a human on the moon by the end of the decade. The world watched as the USA and the Soviet Union pushed to become the first to reach the moon; countries that were becoming independent during this time were influenced by the two systems of liberal democracy and communism that ruled the United States and the Soviet Union, as many believed that whichever system won was the better choice for other countries. Kennedy also wanted to display American technological power by winning. In 1969, when Armstrong set foot on the moon, America won the space race, and, as the Cold War ended, tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States began to ease. They even began to cooperate in space exploration to construct the International Space Station in 1998.

Due to the space race, international tensions, and the political systems of America and the Soviet Union, the Apollo 11 moon landing became a widely watched spectacle that influenced the world. Even now, the expedition is still talked about, with anniversaries being celebrated, conspiracies being created, and new missions launched.