Summary

  • Join the countdown to the final, dramatic 13-minute descent

  • Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the Moon

  • Four days earlier, on 16 July 1969 Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins had been propelled into orbit

Live Reporting

BBC World Service

  1. 'May we dream a new vision'

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  2. The Apollo 1 tragedy

    ‘You heard "fire"… then you heard a scream, then it was over’

    Three astronauts - Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White - lost their lives during the Apollo programme.

    On 27 January 1967, they were preparing for what was to be the first crewed Apollo flight. The astronauts were sitting atop the launch pad for a pre-launch test when a fire broke out in their Apollo capsule.

    Nasa had been anxious to proceed with the tests despite concerns being raised about the safety of the module. It was a shocking blow to the space programme, but many believe that the changes brought in after the disaster ultimately contributed to the successes of later missions.

  3. The 'kids' that took us to the Moon

    The average age of the flight controllers on the Apollo 11 mission was just 27.

    Without this group of youngsters the first Moon landing wouldn’t have happened

  4. 1969: A year of Woodstock, Vietnam War and a Bed-In

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    The first Boeing 747 flight took off from Washington in February, starting a revolution in commercial flight, and Africa hosted a reigning pope for the first time when Pope Paul VI visited Uganda.

    Downing Street witnessed Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s first meeting with US President Richard Nixon, while the Manson Family cult carried out its terrifying killing of actress Sharon Tate and friends.

  5. Losing the space race

    The US might have been the first nation to get humans to the Moon, but it came after more than a decade of losing the space race to their Cold War enemies, the then Soviet Union.

    Starting in 1957, the Soviet Union racked up a series of space firsts, with the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik.

    Later the same year they sent a dog called Laika into space.

    Laika the dog in a spacesuitGetty Images

    Laika died from overheating and panic just a few hours after the mission started

    Then, on 12 April 1961, Major Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was fired from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, in the spacecraft Vostok (East), becoming the first man in space.

    Major Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes travelling at more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometres per hour).

    Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman cosmonaut in 1963 and two years later Alexei Leonov became the first man to perform a space walk.

    Yuri GagarinAFP/Getty Images

    At 5ft 2in tall, Gagarin was well suited to the cramped conditions in the space capsule

  6. 'Today belongs to you'

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  7. 'We choose to go to the Moon'

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    We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard

    John F Kennedy, US President, 1962

  8. Moon landing: Apollo 11’s final descent, 50 years on

    Apollo 11 landed on the Moon 50 years ago today.

    We're counting down the final 13-minute descent, bringing a new perspective on the people who took us to the Moon.

    The first Moon landing was 50 years ago. Here are 13 facts about the historic event

    Download the story of the Apollo 11 mission with the 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast.