Rockets will fly from the field by Servus Place on Tuesday morning as local modellers and astronomers mark the 50th anniversary of the mission that put a man on the moon.
The Edmonton Rocketry Club will launch a fleet of large model rockets from the farmer’s field just northwest of Servus Place Tuesday to commemorate the Apollo 11 space mission. Said mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral on July 16, 1969, resulted in astronaut Neil Armstrong becoming the first human to set foot on the Moon on July 21.
Club spokesperson Matthew Ornawka said the launch was part of a worldwide effort by the U.S. Space and Rocket Centre to have people launch rockets on July 16 as part of the mission’s 50th anniversary.
About five club members would be setting up their launch pads in the field early Tuesday, with each expected to bring one or two rockets.
Ornawka said he personally has about five ready for takeoff, including a model of the Saturn V used by the Apollo program. Even at 1:100th scale, the rocket is still half his height – the full scale rocket was 111 metres tall (about 36 stories) with nozzles twice as wide as he was tall.
“And it has five of those!”
Ornawka encourages everyone to come out to watch the launch, which will happen at precisely 7:32 a.m. to correspond with the original Apollo 11 launch. If the weather co-operates, guests should expect to see rockets shoot up to 600 feet in the air before descending by parachute. For safety’s sake, he asked guests to stay on the grass and to not try and catch the rockets.
If you miss that launch, club members will be at the Telus World of Science at 11 a.m. Tuesday to shoot another 50 rockets, including 10 model Saturn Vs, said space science manager Frank Florian.
“The largest Saturn V will be a little over five-feet tall,” he said, and should go up with a mighty roar and a big white smoke trail.
The science centre is also hosting a talk by space historian Robert Smith on the Apollo program Tuesday and the observatory will be open from 7 p.m. to as late as 2 a.m. all next week.
Lunar memories
St. Albert astronomer Bruce McCurdy will be helping guests at the observatory check out the moon for much of next week’s celebrations. He was 13 when Apollo 11 happened, and credits the Apollo program with his lifelong interest in astronomy.
“I watched every minute of TV coverage from pre-launch to post-splashdown,” he said.
“Each day there would be some kind of live broadcast from space,” he said, and you could see Neil Armstrong and the others floating about the lunar module as they talked to Mission Control.
They only had radio messages from the astronauts for the actual moon landing on July 20, so all you saw was Mission Control, McCurdy said. The landing itself was incredibly tense, as Armstrong realized at the last second that the intended landing site was littered with boulders. He had to switch to manual and improvise a new landing site, touching down with maybe 20 seconds of fuel remaining.
“He was an absolutely brilliant pilot,” McCurdy said.
Moments later, Armstrong radioed Earth to tell the world that “The Eagle has landed.” McCurdy said he stayed up late to watch Armstrong take his one giant leap for mankind about six hours later.
“It was the most exciting thing I ever experienced,” McCurdy said, and probably still is to this day.
Florian called the moon landing “the pinnacle of human achievement” and something that sparked generations (himself included) to take an interest in space and science.
“It was a huge dream come true back in 1969,” he said.
“Something people thought was impossible to do became possible.”
Visit telusworldofscienceedmonton.ca for a full list of Apollo 11 anniversary events.
