This story is part of To The Moon, a series exploring humanity’s first journey to the lunar surface and our future living and working on the moon. On July 16 1969, the Apollo 11 mission to the moon launched atop a Saturn V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. That was 50 years ago. It was a launch that represented a triumph of human achievement and engineering, a frighteningly dangerous foray into the unknown. It’s a moment that feels otherworldly, an event normally experienced via grainy archival footage and crackling audio recordings but now, half a century later, NASA is planning to go back to the moon. And at the space agency’s latest launch, I got a front row seat to the awesome promise of space travel. I got to watch a rocket take off live and in person. Turns out, it doesn’t matter whether you’re experiencing the very first manned mission to the moon in the 1960s or the next step in space discovery in 2019 — a sonic boom is still the best sound you’ll ever hear. Now playing: Watch this: Apollo 11: 50 years on and still just as weird 7:55 Launching a rocket off a rocket In the early hours of Tuesday morning, NASA conducted the Ascent Abort 2 (AA-2) test flight at Cape Canaveral. The launch was the final test flight for the Artemis mission, which is set to send the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface aboard the Orion… [Read full story]
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