US marks 40 years since man first walked on the moon

AFP, Washington

The United States Monday proudly marks the 40th anniversary of its conquest of the moon, a triumph of scientific endeavor now remembered at a time when US dominance in space is increasingly uncertain.
President Barack Obama kicks off a week of events when he meets Monday at the White House with the crew of the Apollo 11 mission, who became the first to accomplish the dream of ages and walk on the surface of the moon.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped down from the lunar lander on July 20, 1969, as an estimated 500 million people on Earth crowded round televisions and radios.
Four decades ago, at the height of the Cold War, the US achievement was a huge morale booster to a country mired in the bloody Vietnam war, ushering in a new sense of confidence and challenging concepts of science and religion.
"Armstrong is on the moon-Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old American, standing on the surface of the moon, on this July 20, 19 hundred and 69," intoned US newscaster Walter Cronkite.
"Whew, boy," exclaimed Cronkite, who died this week aged 92. "There he is, there's a foot coming down the steps. So there's a foot on the moon."
But dreams that one day we might all be able to travel to the stars have been rudely brought down to earth.
Only 12 men, all Americans, have ever walked on the moon, and the last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.
Now ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to establish manned lunar bases for further space exploration to Mars under the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt. And other nations such as Russia, China and even India and Japan are increasingly honing and expanding their own space programs.
"I think we are at an extremely critical juncture as we celebrate this anniversary because, we at least in the US are in the process of deciding ... what is the future of humans in space," said John Logsdon, an expert in aerospace history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.