President Donald Trump is marked the 50th anniversary of the first human steps on the moon at an Oval Office with a meeting with former Apollo 11 astronauts.
The group includes Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins and the family of mission commander Neil Armstrong.
In the meeting Trump told them, “we are bringing the glamour back” to the space program.
At one point, the president turned to Aldrin, a longtime friend and the second person to walk on the lunar surface and asked him for an assessment of the space program. Aldrin said it was deflating to watch U.S. dominance in space slipping away after the tremendous gains NASA made during the 1960s.
“We have the number one rocket in the U.S., and we have the number one rocket. And they cannot get into lunar orbit with significant manoeuvre capability,” he told Trump. “That’s a great disappointment to me.”
Armstrong, who died in 2012, and Aldrin made history when they landed on the moon 50 years ago Saturday, as Collins orbited overhead in their command module.
Trump, a strong supporter of a U.S. mission to Mars, quizzed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, in a way that suggested he would like to skip a moon mission on the way to embarking to Mars. He questioned whether the United States should use the moon as a jumping-off point to Mars, which is the current plan, or simply go straight to the red planet.
A Quick Look: The 50th Anniversary Of The First Apollo Landing On The Moon
