Apollo 11 50th Anniversary is Underway

Tuesday morning at about 7:30 A.M. Mountain Time, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, carrying three astronauts on a mission to the Moon. The first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, died in 2012, but Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, and Michael Collins, who orbited the Earth's natural satellite, were on-site to share the event. You will be hearing and seeing plenty of news stories, features and more for the next week, as historic events are noted - when Apollo began to orbit the moon, when the Eagle lander landed and when, six hours later, Armstrong and Aldrin got out of the spacecraft and set foot on the moon. But that's not all. The launch and rendezvous with the Apollo spacecraft and the splashdown in the ocean will all be commemorated. The July 16 Launch is the first of three big events. July 20 is the Moon Landing and July 24 is Splashdown.

NASA is planning a live broadcast on the eve of the landing. The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation has a golf tourney, parade and pub crawl in Florida. Denver has "Apollopalooza" this week at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will have an evening event called "The Eagle Has Landed." Many art museums are promoting historic photos of the moon - reaching back into the 1800s. You don't have to look far to find something about Apollo 11 on the internet. But, most importantly for those of us who were around when it happened - what are your memories of where you were and how you followed the adventure back in 1969. For me - we watched the landing on TV in the morning, went up to Lake Como for waterskiing for a few hours and came back to Hamilton in time to see the guys step out onto the lunar surface.