Kevin Fong: Why is the Moon landing still relevant 50 years on?

To mark the anniversary of the Apollo Program’s greatest success, we ask the host of the new BBC podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon why it was so important.

Published: July 17, 2019 at 6:48 pm

If you were to picture the Moon landing in your head right now, you could probably conjure up images of Neil Armstrong’s famous first steps, accompanied by his inspirational (and often misquoted) speech, despite it happening many years before most of us were even born.

But this remarkable achievement did not come easily, and the decade-long mission culminated in the final nerve wracking 13 minutes it took the Moon lander to arrive safely on the surface.

This moment, and the people who contributed to this landmark occasion in our quest to explore space, are the subject of a new BBC podcast series, 13 Minutes To The Moon.

Sciencefocus.com editor Alexander McNamara caught up with the show’s host, Kevin Fong, about the show, who tells us why the Moon landing still inspires us today, what it was like speaking to the people who ran mission control, and where our next Moon shot will be.

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