By Keridwen Cornelius | Phoenix Magazine
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, we celebrate Arizona’s pivotal role in space exploration, from the Apollo missions to shoebox-size satellites to rendezvous with asteroids.
On a bright September afternoon in 1962 – in front of a large crowd in Houston, fittingly – President John F. Kennedy first announced his goal to send a man to the Moon.
Ultimately known as the “We choose to go to the Moon” speech, it ignited the American imagination like rocket fuel. But lunar science wasn’t the thing that so fired everyone up. To most people, the Moon was a bleak, bone-colored finish line in the race to beat Russia at the technology game.
Thanks to a few scientists who successfully wooed the astronauts, that perspective changed – and the Moon turned out to be far more fascinating than earthlings suspected.
