By Connor Robinson [1]
BELLEVILLE – On Tuesday night Belleville Public Library [2] hosted a presentation about the Apollo 11 moon landing.
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing. On July 20, 1969 the Apollo 11 [3] lunar module with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin inside touched down on the lunar surface eight years after president Kennedy announced the United States intention to put a man on the moon and get them back safely.
Frank Hitchens, an amateur astronomer from Perth, has been doing presentations about the moon landing for years.
“In July of 1969 when the first two astronauts landed on the moon I was a 12 year old kid at the time and I got to be really fascinated with anything to do with stars and the exploration of space.”
The presentation included a discussion on events leading up to the moon landing and Canada’s contribution to the effort.
“The landing gear of the lunar module was made by a company in Quebec.” said Hitchens
After the cancellation of the Avro Arrow [4] program in 1959, chief aerodynamicist Jim Chamberlin and 25 other Avro engineers left Canada to contribute to the American space program being run by NASA [5].
Hitchens has vivid memories of watching the landing live as a kid.
“It was almost surreal because the camera that they had to film them taking the first steps on the moon was a pretty crude black and white camera and the images they provided were almost ghost like, it almost didn’t look real. So it was quite a neat experience for a 12 year old kid, and then afterword before I went to bed I remember looking up at the moon and thinking, there are men up there walking on the moon. So its a pretty thrilling experience for a young kid.”
Hitchens also spoke about projects Gemini and Mercury.
Project Mercury [6] was started to send a man into orbit and return him safely to earth. Project Gemini’s [7] goal was to master the art of docking two space craft while in space.
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