1960s the Apollo 8 crew (Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders) being the first manned mission to orbit another celestial body (the moon) during Christmas of 1968. On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11, the first human spaceflight landed on the Moon. Launched on 16 July 1969, it carried mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and the Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. Apollo 11 fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on 25 May 1961: "I
Yuri Gagarin during the period of the Soviet Union. The Air Force Academy was renamed Gagarin Air Force Academy in 1968. There is street in Warsaw called Yuri Gagarin Street. Gagarin has been honored on the Moon by both astronauts and astronomers. He was honored by the American space program during Apollo 11 in 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left a memorial satchel containing medals commemorating Gagarin and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov on the surface. In 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin left the "Fallen Astronaut" at their landing site as a memorial to all the