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In Memory, on the Moon

By milhayser on August 31, 2012.

Neil Armstrong, first man to walk (and take a photograph) on the Moon, died August 25th at the age of eighty-two. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin turned a primordial fantasy into reality, and what we knew was possible changed in the space of a television broadcast. On Universe, Claire L. Evans honors the human spirit as explorer of the solar system, writing "Going to the moon has a tendency to turn test pilots into poets.” Now, with machines like Curiosity in the vanguard, we will have to wait a while for true Martian poetry. On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel says that Armstrong's last act on the moon was to leave a "small package filled with items memorializing previously deceased pioneers in space exploration.” May his memory outlast the footprints he left on a windless world.

Tags
NASA
The Moon
The New Frontier

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