The Apollo program, which on July 20, 1969 saw US astronauts step onto the lunar surface for the first time in history, was "an example of how Americans can do anything they put their minds to," Obama told Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins at the White House.

He praised the trio who landed on the moon 40 years ago, and others who took part in Apollo missions, for inspiring an entire generation of US scientists and engineers, and vowed to support the US space agency, NASA, so that future generations of Americans might follow in their footsteps.

"There is another generation of kids out there that is looking up at the sky and they'll be the next Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin," Obama said.

"We want to be sure that NASA will be there for them when they want to take their journey."

The US Apollo program fired the public's imagination throughout the 1960s after president John F. Kennedy set the United States on a race against its Cold War arch rival, the Soviet Union, to be the first country to put men on the moon.

An estimated 500 million people crowded around televisions and radios to watch and listen as Armstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 lunar lander onto the moon's Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969 to declare: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

But soon after, as the United States became mired in the war in Vietnam, public interest in and government funding for the Apollo program waned.

Only a dozen men, all American, walked on the moon between Apollo 11 in July 1969 and Apollo 17, in December 1972, when the program was shelved to make way for the space shuttle -- seen as a cheap, reliable and reusable mode of going into space.

After massive budget overruns and a patchy safety record, the shuttle, which was used chiefly to ferry parts into space to build the International Space Station, is due to be taken off the launchpad once and for all as of next year.

The Constellation program, which is supposed to replace it won't be ready for spaceflight until 2015 and has been plagued by its own set of problems, including spiraling costs in a time of economic hardship, which have dented the project's popularity in the eyes of the US public.

Obama in May ordered a review of the problem-plagued, budget-busting rocket, and a panel of experts headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine is due to issue recommendations in late August.

But on Monday, as the world marked the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk, Apollo veterans urged Americans to look beyond NASA's problems and not just shoot for the moon again but to aim beyond it and set their sights on Mars.

"We need to go back to the moon," Eugene Cernan, the Apollo 17 astronaut who was the last man to walk on the lunar surface in 1972, told a news conference held with half a dozen other Apollo astronauts.

"We need to learn a bit more about what we think we know already, we need to establish bases, put new telescopes on the moon, get prepared to go to Mars. Because the ultimate goal is to go to Mars," Cernan said.

Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, called for a bold resumption of the US space exploration program, with Mars as the goal.

"There may be life on Mars and if there is, it's damn sure we ought to go there and look at it," he said, calling for Americans to revive their pioneering spirit.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Space Tourism, Space Transport and Space Exploration News

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News