Apollo 11 crew planned for their death before leaving on moon mission

September 26th, 2009 DHAKA - Applauding India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission and the discovery of water on the moon, a Dhaka daily has said the find has significantly widened the scope for space research. But The Daily Star newspaper, in an editorial Saturday, cautioned against rivalry among those engaged in research and exploration on the moon.

September 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Two US spacewalkers left the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday to remove an empty ammonia tank that is crucial for keeping the station cool. John "Danny" Olivas and Nicole Stott left the ISS at 2149 GMT for the planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - The space shuttle Endeavour landed at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida Friday carrying a seven-member crew of US, Canadian and Japanese astronauts. The landing at 1448 GMT marked the end of the 17-day mission that saw the completion of the Japanese laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS).

July 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama welcomed the crew of Apollo 11 to the White House Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of their journey to the moon and called the three men "genuine American heroes." On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface, while fellow crew member Michael Collins circled the moon in the command vehicle. "I think that all of us recall the moment in which mankind finally was untethered from this planet and was able to explore the stars; the moment in which we had one of our own step on the moon and leave that imprint that is there to this day," Obama said.

July 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - It's been decades since they set foot on the moon, but the pioneers of the Apollo programme remain committed to exploring space with the goal of sending a human to Mars. Seven astronauts from the Apollo programme talked with journalists Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

July 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - There are still many secrets waiting to be gleaned from moon rocks collected by Apollo 11 astronauts on their historic moonwalk 40 years ago. Randy L Korotev, research professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences Washington University-St Louis (WUSTL), has studied lunar samples and their chemical compositions since he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin.

July 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In the four decades since the world watched his "one giant leap for mankind", Neil Armstrong hasn't had much use for the limelight. Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon July 20, 1969, during NASA's Apollo 11 mission.

July 18th, 2009 LONDON - One fourth of Britons believe that the 1969 Apollo 11 mission moon landings were nothing but a hoax, according to a survey. A total of 1009 people participated in the survey for E andT magazine, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

July 8th, 2009 LONDON - Buzz Lightyear, the fictional cartoon character from the film 'Toy Story', is believed by some people to have been the first man on the Moon, revealed a survey. The survey revealed "deeply worrying" levels of ignorance about the Apollo space programme, which sent three men to the moon 40 years ago this month.

July 4th, 2009 LONDON - A Russian spacecraft is said to have landed on the moon hours before NASA's Apollo 11 in 1969. According to a recording that has now been declassified by the Jodrell Bank Observatory, astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell'sradio telescope, which was hidden in the archives until recently, shows the Russian craft orbiting the moon and crash-landing onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21, just a few hours before the Americans lifted In July 1969, the telescopes at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in Cheshire, were tracking the Americans' Eagle Lander carrying astronauts towards the moon's surface.

June 20th, 2009 London, June 20 (ANI): Besides courage, determination and little bit of fear - American astronauts took soft porn pictures with them to the Moon! Steamy pages from Playboy magazine were smuggled by pranksters at NASA into ring-bound checklists attached to the wrists of two spacemen on the Apollo 12 second manned landing in November 1969, reports The Sun. But that was not all, shocked Pete Conrad and Al Bean found jokers had added captions to the naked girls, like: "Seen any interesting hills and valleys?" Mission commander Conrad recalled: "I didn't find them until we were on our first Moonwalk." (ANI)

June 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will hunt for water on the Moon, launched aboard an Atlas V rocket on June 18. The satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon.

June 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA launched its dual moon mission Thursday that will pave the way for humans to return to the moon. The Atlas V rocket launch lifted off at 05:32 p.m., just 20 minutes after planned, from NASA's Cape Canaveral in Florida.

June 5th, 2009 NEW YORK - Buzz Aldrin has revealed that not all memories of the historic landing on the Moon 40 years ago were as romantic as portrayed. The second man to set foot on the moon said the July 20, 1969 landing bore another side of reality that the video archives could not translate.

March 16th, 2009 NEW DELHI - When India's first manned space mission takes off, likely in 2017, it will have Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel on board. The IAF is to train two of its personnel for the mission, in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said a senior IAF official.