Article #274911

The first lunar mission since 1972 is about to lift off. It may not be as groundbreaking as the Apollo flights, but don’t write off the fascination the moon still exerts

On 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong swung open the hatch of his spacecraft and clambered down a short ladder towards the surface of the moon. The Apollo 11 moon mission came only 66 years after Orville Wright made the first successful flight in an aeroplane. Armstrong captured a sense of that progression in the indelible first words he spoke on the lunar surface: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

That was nearly 57 years ago. No human has visited the moon since the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972.

Paul Owen is a Guardian journalist and author of the novel The Weighing of the Heart. He is working on a book about the moon landings