Apollo 11 astronauts left heartwarming tributes on the moon that not many people know about
“That’s one small step for me, one giant leap for mankind,” Astronaut Neil Armstrong famously said as he stepped out onto the surface of the moon, making him the first person to ever do so.
When the iconic moment in 1969 happened, around 650 million people down on Earth were glued to their TV screens.
But one little known fact about the lunar landing is that the Apollo 11 astronauts left behind some heart-warming tributes when they set off for home.
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Shooting off in the lunar module, former NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin recalled seeing the American flag the team had planted into the ground tip over from the wind created by the spacecraft’s exhaust.
But it wasn’t the only commemorative item that the crew left behind when they headed back to Earth.
As Armstrong and Aldrin were climbing the ladder to re-enter the lunar module, Aldrin removed some objects from his shoulder pocket and dropped them onto the moon’s surface.
These items included a patch in honor of the Apollo 1 Mission, which was meant to be the first mission in the effort to land a man on the moon but their spacecraft never took off.
Instead, it caught fire during a launch rehearsal and all three members of the crew tragically died.
Aldrin also left behind two memorial medals in honor of Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, who both lost their lives in tragic accidents.
Another object left was a small silicon disk containing good will messages from the leaders of 73 countries around the world.
And finally, the commemorative last thing placed on the moon’s surface was a gold olive branch to symbolize global peace.
The revelation about these gestures from the astronauts caused a stir online as people were touched by the sentiment.
Taking to social media to share their reactions, one user wrote: “The fact that they left medals honoring cosmonauts is quite heartwarming.”
Another said: “We should preserve this as a memorial for future moon tourists. It should stay like this forever and never be altered.”
A third commented: “To leave all that medals and patches to celebrate the ones who died to make this mission possible warms my heart.”
A fourth person wrote: “A lot of people don’t know how much respect the Russian and American space programs had/have for each other. The governments were competitive but not the space agencies.”
And a fifth added: “Would be cool if we went back to this landing site to film a documentary about it, recording it with our high tech cameras of today. That would be amazing to watch.”