051 APOLLO ASTRONAUTS

It would be a truism to say that man has always wanted to reach the stars. However, this age-old dream of mankind became available only in the second half of the 20th century, with the rapid development of rocket technology and digital technology. At the same time, the "race to the stars" was in a peculiar way politically marked by the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States, which decidedly accelerated space exploration after 1945. None of the superpowers wanted to be beaten by their rival. After the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite (Sputnik-1) in 1957, and even more so after the successful launch into space and the return to Earth of the first man in history - cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (April 1961), US President John Fitzgerald Kenedy He announced that the country would make a successful manned landing on the moon. This insanely ambitious project was carried out by NASA as part of the Apollo program in 1966-1972, although the program itself was launched in 1961. In the same year, the US launched its first citizen into space - the astronaut Alan Shepard. However, in July 1969, NASA achieved the goal set for it eight years earlier - it carried out a successful, manned landing on the moon, and the first man to set foot on the Silver Globe was Neil Armstrong in July 1969.