It’s been 40 years since man first stepped on the moon. It’s been 47 years since a young, charismatic President stood in Rice Stadium and said, “we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Though President Kennedy would never see his dream come true, on July 20, 1969, man made it to the moon.On return from the moon, Apollo 11’s command vehicle, Columbia, was sent to the National Air and Space Museum where you can still see it today. Columbia is a testament to the ability for a country to come together behind a cause, for a single leader to inspire us all, and for the ingenuity of a generation. So here on the 40th anniversary of one of America’s greatest achievements, be sure to look back and what we have accomplished, and look forward toward what we have yet to do.The mission began during Kennedy’s speech to a group of young college students at Rice University. Rice Stadium was packed to the brim to listen to one of the best speakers of their time, not too different from our current president. He promised that the 1960’s would be an era of great change and great accomplishment. There he declared, “we choose the moon.”In the following years America would work on one of the largest engineering projects in the history of our planet. Kennedy’s goal was slowly made possible by the enormous Apollo program that employed 400,000 people and had the support of 20,000 universities.After 4 manned test missions, NASA decided it was time to go to the moon with Apollo 11. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched on the back of a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral on its way to the moon. It would take four long days to reach the lunar surface. For every one of those hours the astronauts were monitored from Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Mission Control.“Houston, the Eagle has landed,” were the first words spoken from the surface of the moon. From 238,857 miles away, America erupted into applause. Millions of people all over the world watched the crowning achievement of a decade of work as Neil Armstrong took “one step for a man, and one giant leap for mankind.”For those with a good enough telescope, you can see the Eagle looking back at Earth from the Sea of Tranquility.Photo credit: flickr cc Kevin Collins