Though NASA expected their complicated machines would not always work right, the first deaths in the space program still came as a shock -- because the fatal mishap occurred on the ground.

Apollo 11. On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in the Lunar Module Eagle and became the first humans to step foot on the lunar surface while astronaut Michael Collins ...

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Fifty years ago today, the massive Saturn V rocket for the Apollo 11 mission that would fulfill President Kennedy’s goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth ...

Michael Collins was the command module pilot for Apollo 11, the spaceflight that took humans to the Moon for the first time Jason Hahn is a former Human Interest and Sports Reporter for PEOPLE.

Perhaps even more impressive, after taking a walk around, they climbed back in their lunar lander, launched off the surface of another planetary body (another first), rejoined the command module ...

The first manned mission to the moon, Apollo 11, launched on July 16, 1969. The crew of NASA's Apollo 11 mission, from left, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Michael Collins, and Neil Armstrong, pose with a ...

An investigator looks at the charred interior of the Apollo I command module after the flash fire that killed the astronauts. All three men were killed on Jan. 27, 1967, when a fire erupted inside ...