This year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. While it is easy to focus only on Apollo 11, this celebration of human achievement actually began in a somber way when we commemorated 50 years since the loss of the Apollo 1 crew, which occurred back in January of 1967. We moved on to remembering the first manned Apollo 7 mission from October 1968, and the audacious Apollo 8 flight to the moon in December of that same year. Apollo 9 cleared the way by testing the lunar lander in Earth orbit in March of 1969. Apollo 10 proved our ability to rendezvous in lunar orbit in May, which all led to the big event on July 20, 1969 when humans first set foot on the moon.
Celebrating Lunar Achievements
We can keep celebrating, though! The 50th anniversary of the third and fourth humans on the moon will be this November. We can continue to celebrate in April when we remember the heroism of the Apollo 13 mission. We can all relax for a time since the 50th anniversary of the next moon landing will have to wait until 2021, as Apollo 14 touched down on the moon on February 5, 1971. We can then celebrate Apollo 15 and the first car on the moon in August 2021. We will then have to wait until April 2022 to celebrate Apollo 16 and December to remember the last time people walked, and drove, on the moon.
You can read about each of the missions here. I am struck by the sheer number of people who were involved in placing those 12 men on the moon between 1969 and 1972—I've heard that 400,000 people were directly involved. Remember, these people worked in a time before email, when the entire mission control had less computing power than your phone.
A Partnership to Create the Next Generation of Innovators
Each of these stories can be inspiring to students. I know the stories and memories of the events have inspired me to create opportunities for students by combining the materials we have designed at ShareSpace Education, a key program of the Aldrin Family Foundation, with the Mimio MyBot educational robotics system and coding programs developed by Boxlight. We are working to put tools in the hands of teachers that will help their students use communication and collaboration skills to apply the knowledge of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics to accomplish the next great human adventure: the establishment of humans on Mars!
Click here to learn more about our giant map and robot bundles.
