One of the most beautiful first pages in the 161-year history of Diário de Notícias is the one that reports that Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. We have been following the mission Artemis II in recent days, and, despite the record distance now reached by humans in relation to Earth, we are far from the enthusiasm generated by that historic July 20, 1969. But this phased return of NASA to the Moon, relaunches human travel in space, which in recent decades almost seemed to be restricted to trips to the International Space Station. Ambitious objectives, such as a return to the Moon (after the last moon landing was in 1972) or an unprecedented trip to Mars, were limited to being the subjects of films, even though space exploration never stopped through probes and telescopes of gigantic reach.
There were 12 men to set foot on the Moon between 1969 (Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with the third member of the mission Apollo 11 to be Michael Collins) and 1972 (Apollo 17). All Americans, with the arrival on the Moon having a very special symbolism in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space exploration, which the Soviets (today we would say Russians, and, in fact, Yuri Gagarine, the first man in space, and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman, are) led at certain times, after having surprised the world in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnikthe first satellite.
Today, space exploration has more participants, but if we think again of the Moon as a distinguishing factor, only four other countries besides the United States have made some type of moon landing (but unmanned) and, apart from the Soviet Union/Russia, all of them – that is, Japan, China and India – already in the 21st century.
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