USS Hornet (CV-12) 27 March 1967. She reached Japan exactly a month later and departed the Sasebo base on 19 May for the war zone. She operated in Vietnamese waters throughout the first half of 1967. "Hornet" recovered the astronauts from the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11, on 24 July 1969. President Nixon was on board to welcome the returning astronauts back to Earth, where they lived in quarantine aboard "Hornet" prior to transfer to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston. The first steps on Earth of returning moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, are marked
Apollo 11 in popular culture is an Apollo 11 Lunar Lander as well as a US flag in the eastern side of the map close to the Soviet starting area. The upper stage of the lunar lander is still attached, which could only happen if the astronauts never left the Moon. In the video game "Kerbal Space Program", there is a monument dedicated to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Mun (the game's analogue of the Moon) at the exact coordinates where Apollo 11 landed in 1969 as an easter egg. Soon after the mission a conspiracy theory arose that the landing was a