Frank Carlson Library

Fifty years ago, in a small, fragile spacecraft designed for only one purpose—landing on the Moon—two American astronauts prepared to fly that spacecraft from its 10 mile high orbit above the Moon down to a landing on the Sea of Tranquility. It was a sea in name only. It was actually a bone dry, ancient dusty basin pockmarked with craters and littered with rocks and boulders. Somewhere in that 500 mile diameter basin, the astronauts would attempt...