Congressional Digest

Excerpt

On May 25, 1961, at a Joint Session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy spoke about the space race that had been underway since October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite and became the first nation to orbit a manmade object. Kennedy said: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” The United States fulfilled that commitment when the Apollo 11 spacecraft successfully landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the firs…