We went to the moon by Gordon Caruana Dingli, published by Kite Group, 2021

The time had finally come: in Malta it was 4.56am on the morning of July 21, 1969 – in the USA it was still the evening of July 20 – when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon and described the moment in his most famous phrase “a small step for (a) man – but a giant leap for mankind”.

Edwin Buzz Aldrin followed him 20 minutes later. They walked on the Moon for two and a half hours, and collected rock samples and left their footprints on the lunar surface, which will last forever, there being no wind, rain or any form of weather which will erase them.

This defining period in the history of the human species, which is still recent enough for many people to recall vividly, is described in great detail by  Gordon Caruana Dingli in this excellent book published by Kite Group. 

Caruana Dingli describes the defining moment when more than 500 million viewers around the world watched on television on that night of July 20-21, 1969, as the astronauts stepped down into the Sea of Tranquillity, “in peace for all mankind”.

The moon landing marks the finale of an unprecedented space race between the Soviets and the Americans, in the midst of the Cold War, kicking off with US President John F. Kennedy’s promise on 25 May, 1961, “to land a person on the Moon before the end of this decade and bring him safely back to Earth”. That is when NASA found itself inventing space travel as it went along.

Before it actually happened, many considered this as an impossible endeavour – let us not forget that Kennedy committed the US to land on the moon just three weeks after they had sent Alan Shepard as their first man into space.  This was just over a month after Gagarin set the USSR’s first human spaceflight achievement. 

The Apollo 11 landing was the ultimate boost in morale for the American public at large – against the Soviets who had been first to reach every milestone in space before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. The USSR launched the first satellite, the first crew, the first person to orbit the Earth, the first woman in space, made the first spacewalk and even secured the first robotic spacecraft landing on the Moon, and later even the first landing on another planet with the Venera 7 landing on Venus in 1970.

Buzz Aldrin’s footprint on the moon following the lunar moon landing mission at the landing site of Apollo 11. Photo: Shutterstock.com

We Went to the Moon is an apt title to this book since this tremendous achievement is shared with all mankind. The book explains how this journey into the unknown unfolded and who were the main protagonists. It took less than a decade, but it was not without its tragedies.

In 1967, the first Apollo mission itself was a major setback for the Americans: the three astronauts burned to death in a ground test in their capsule.  The cabin, filled with pure oxygen, was set on fire after a damaged cable set off an electrical spark.

Apollo missions were also immensely expensive, with the programme’s total cost approaching $152 billion, in today’s US dollars. That is the equivalent of 25 times Malta’s total annual government budgetary expenditure, which is approximately €6 billion. Such was the price of the space race with the Soviet Union – without which there would have been no Apollo 11 landing in 1969.

Caruana Dingli writes about the men who landed on the Moon between July 20, 1969, and December 14, 1972. Nobody has been there since. Fifty-two years later, only four of these 12 heroes are still alive: Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11, David Scott (Apollo 15), Charles Duke (Apollo 16) and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17), a geologist and also a former US senator whom Caruana Dingli welcomed to Malta on a visit in 2009 to deliver talks to the Maltese public.

This book fills a gap in Maltese popular science literature.  Each one of the short chapters in this book chronicles the events as they unfolded and the people at the forefront who made it happen.

The second part of the book includes a unique set of recollections from famous Maltese personalities, from former presidents and prime ministers as well as from many others from all walks of life, who relive their July 1969 childhood (way past their bedtime) experiences.

I was surprised to see how vivid these memories remain ingrained in people’s minds – down to the brand and model of the very television set used to watch these events as they happened.

Part scientific, part historical, this book will easily engage readers, even those with little interest in space exploration, in a journey back to the sixties, as it presents the events not in isolation but in the context of their times, both in Malta and abroad.

Nowadays, conspiracy theorists try to make us believe that perhaps it was just a hoax, staged in a film studio. Considering that we went to the Moon only six times, the last nearly 50 years ago, we may start witnessing the story of these heroes being forgotten and denied. This is the risk that occurs when the memory of the facts is not rekindled.

So, after 52 years, this book is a valuable contribution to revive the memory of those facts that, at the time, deeply moved hundreds of millions of people all over the world.

There is no doubt that the lunar landing continues to inspire today’s space endeavours – instead of duelling superpowers, we have rival billionaires like Bezos and Musk. We may debate at length over whether humanity will, or should, ever go back to the Moon but the Apollo 11 lunar landing may well be remembered as the most significant event of the 20th century.

Alexei Pace lectures about astronomy and has served as president of the Astronomical Society of Malta.