Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Moon Mission

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – Today begins the 50th anniversary celebration of one of the greatest achievements in human history… our first walk on the moon.

50 years ago today, the Apollo 11 launched.

But you don’t have to go visit NASA to see it all.

News 12’s Bill Mitchell shows us how a new IMAX documentary here in Chattanooga shows us things about the Moon Mission we have never seen before.

It is called “Apollo 11.”

THOM BENSON with The Tennessee Aquarium tells us “It turns out they had audio…11-thousand hours of audio was captured . They has 60 people in mission control, had the three astronauts and they were recorded from the entire mission ..from before lift-off through landing on the moon and then splashdown and the safe return.”

Now, when history is made, you’ll find it everywhere online, on your phone and on TV.

But in 1969, most of us watched Walter Cronkite.

This video from CBS shows a very different kind of news coverage than you’ll get now.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=460069778146055

from TVA

TVA also showed us their contribution to the moon mission today with vintage photos from the 1960s.

The giant Saturn rockets that pushed Apollo to the moon were built next door in Huntsville.

But you couldn’t load them on a truck and send them to Cape Canaveral.

Instead, they were loaded on barges and floated down the Tennessee River to the gulf.