Apollo 11 brought humans onto the surface of the Moon for the first time in 1969. Shown here is Buzz Aldrin setting up the Solar Wind experiment as part of Apollo 11, with Neil Armstrong snapping the photograph. (Credit: NASA/Apollo 11)

The secret reason the USA beat the USSR to the Moon

Sixty years ago, the Soviet Union was way ahead of the USA in the space race. Then one critical event changed everything.

Ethan Siegel
11 min readDec 19, 2024

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Not only in the United States, but all across the world, humanity celebrated 2024 as the 55th anniversary of the culmination of the Space Race: the quest to put a human being on the Moon and safely return them to Earth. On July 20, 1969, our species achieved a dream older than civilization itself, as human beings set foot on the surface of another world beyond Earth when they walked on the surface of the Moon, some 380,000 km away. From 1969 through 1972, a total of 12 American astronauts walked on the lunar surface, marking the first and only time to date that human beings have set foot on the solid surface of a world beyond our own planet.

If any nation was going to do it, most thought it was going to be the Soviet Union. The Soviets were first to every milestone in space before that:

  • the first satellite,
  • the first crewed spaceflight,
  • the first person to orbit the Earth,
  • the first woman in space,
  • the first spacewalk,
  • the first landers on another world,

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Starts With A Bang!
Starts With A Bang!

Published in Starts With A Bang!

The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

Ethan Siegel
Ethan Siegel

Written by Ethan Siegel

The Universe is: Expanding, cooling, and dark. It starts with a bang! #Cosmology Science writer, astrophysicist, science communicator & NASA columnist.

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