Apollo 11 landing 55 years ago

In 1968, the Proton-K rocket launched the Zond-5 spacecraft, which was the first in the world to circle the Moon and return to Earth. This journey was made by living creatures: turtles, flies, worms, bacteria and plant seeds – this is how they studied the impact of space flight on living organisms. Technically, astronauts could have been in their place, but the engineers decided to play it safe. And they didn’t have the next chance: during the Apollo 8 mission, the Americans flew around the Moon.

After the Americans landed on the Moon, the USSR closed the lunar program. It's a pity, because there was a project to respond with a lunar base for several people. If work in this direction had continued, perhaps a permanent colony of earthlings would have already been built on the Earth's satellite.

Now what?

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in returning to the Moon. In addition to NASA's well-known, albeit desperately stalled, program “Artemis” The Chinese are planning to land on the moon.

Literally in the last year, devices from Chinese, Indian, American and Japanese scientists have landed on the Earth's satellite. Russia also tried to land the Luna-25 probe, but so far we have only learned how to launch a spacecraft into a lunar orbit.

I would like to believe that thanks to cooperation and competition between countries, we will witness the return of man to the Moon and even the creation of bases on the Earth's satellite. And then we will go to Mars!

And here is a mini-selection of what else you can read about space: