50 Years Later: Reminiscing on Apollo Moon Landing [Video]

July 20, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing by the Apollo 11 crew. To celebrate this milestone, and take a look at some of the valuable lessons learned during the Apollo missions, Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden, Deputy Program Manager of the Gateway Program at NASA Lara Kearney, and former NASA Flight Director and former Director of the Johnson Space Center Gerry Griffin joined Bobak Ferdowsi, Fault Protection Lead at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for a conversation at SXSW 2019 looking back at the historic missions.

This SXSW Featured Session coincided with the 2019 SXSW Film Festival screening of Apollo 11. While much of the conversation features fascinating anecdotes about the early days of NASA and manned space travel, the panelists also tied those experiences to modern times at NASA – discussing technologies that have stood the test of time and the future goals of the organization.

"The good thing is physics has not changed in the last 50 years ... I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in design reviews and thought, ‘Oh my God. These guys got it right 50 years ago.’ We would look at new ways of doing things, and at the end of the day physics is physics and bringing a spacecraft home going 20,000 MPH, there’s generally one shape that’s the happiest doing that." - Lara Kearney, on the legacy of the science behind Apollo

Watch the entire Featured Session, Apollo 50: Celebrating the Past to Awaken the Future, as well as more SXSW 2019 videos from Featured Speakers and Keynotes on our YouTube channel.

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Apollo 50: Celebrating the Past to Awaken the Future Featured Session - Photo by JD Lewis