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COMPREHENSION PRACTICE |
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The First Man on the Moon |
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Early in the morning of July 16, 1969, nearly a million people jammed the roads around Cape Kennedy in the USA. In a heavily-guarded open space, they could all see a huge white rocket with its nose pointed up to the sky. This was the Saturn 5 and in its nose were three astronauts who were going to be the first men on the moon. With a prolonged roar, amidst a vast cloud of smoke and fire, the enormous rose rose skyward over the ocrean and then into outer space.
Three days later, the three astronauts had reached the moon. One man remained aboard the spacecraft while the other two, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, prepared to land on the surface of the moon. They made their descent in a lunar ( lunar is 'moon' in Latin) module. This was a special craft made of the lightest materials possible so that it would be able to take off from the moon's surface again. Since the gravity of the moon is only one-sixth that of the earth's, less force is needed to take off from the moon. Therefore the lunar module did not need a huge ricket to go up again. It weighed only as much as a small car.
On July 20, the two men brought the lunar module to within 50,000 feet of the moon's surface, where they began their final ten-minute descent. Suddenly, as the lunar module neared the moon's surface, an enormous boulder-strewn crater appeared right in front of them. Armstrong quickly steered the craft away to a safer landing site, where he brought the module gently down to rest. |
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Six hours later Armstrong eased his bulky space-suit through the hatch of the lunar module and climbed down its short ladder. On earth, hundreds of millions of people watched the televised action breathlessly. "I'm going to step off the LM now," Armstrong said. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." He walked a few steps, and left his footprints in the dust of the moon, the first footprints left by the first man ever to walk on the moon.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours on the moon before returning to the spacecraft. On July 24, the three men 'splashed down' safely in the Pacific Ocean. |
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Questions |
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1. Why were there so many people crowding around Cape Kennedy? |
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2. How many men had landed on the moon before July 20, 1969?
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3. Why was the lunar module so light? |
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4. The astronauts needed a huge rocket to take off from the earth but they did not need one to take off from the moon. Why? |
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For Part 2 |
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