1969 – Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Ed Aldrin, and Michael Collins were launched from the John F. Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral) aboard Apollo 11 on this date. Apollo 11 was the fifth manned mission of the Apollo program and the target was to land a man on the moon, thus fulfilling a promise made to the world by President Kennedy nearly a decade earlier. The Saturn V SA-506 rocket left Pad A at 9:32 a.m. (EDT), and the lunar module landed on the moon’s surface on July 20th. After less than a day on the moon, the astronauts flew back to earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24th.