Read the text about the first lunar landing. Choose the correct word or phrase for each blank.
The Apollo Moon Landing
50 years ago, on July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neill Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to
their foot on the moon. The United States had won the space
with the Soviet Union. After
from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on July 16th, the lunar module Eagle landed on the moon's
. Four days after the lunar landing Apollo 11 successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
The race to the moon began in 1962 when President John F Kennedy
that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In the following years, the American space agency NASA received large amounts of government
in order to achieve a lunar landing.
The Apollo spacecraft consisted of the command and service module,
the lunar landing module that would bring two astronauts to the moon's surface and take off again to successfully dock with the command module. A
rocket, the Saturn V, was built to
from Earth's orbit.
NASA's space programme
a catastrophic setback in 1967 when three Apollo astronauts died in a fire
practicing on the ground at Cape Kennedy.
About 600 million people around the world watched the
moon landing. Neill Armstrong's first words on the moon are among the most
in history: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".
All in all, the Apollo programme sent 9 spacecraft to the moon in the 60s and 70s. Six of them
astronauts on the lunar surface. About 400 kilos of lunar rock were
and brought back to earth.
50 years after the first moon landing events all across the US were organised to celebrate this historic and technological
.