Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin says the world is at a crucial moment where decisive action from a global leader now would start humans on a path towards the colonisation of other planets:

"I happen to feel that at this juncture in time that a leader of the world of some nation has the opportunity to initiate a clear pathway that can result in creatures from the Earth beginning to settle on another planet in this solar system," he told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

And, perhaps surprisingly for a man who secured his place in the history of space exploration as a member of the crew which made the first lunar landing, he says that such action would be "far more a big deal than Kennedy saying we are going to compete with the Russians to go to the Moon".

It is 40 years this month since Aldrin joined Neil Armstrong on the Moon in the celebrated Apollo 11 mission – a mission which combined one of the most daring feats of exploration in human history with one of its most astonishing scientific achievements.

The world was left in awe of the technological prowess and ambition of Nasa and of its people – most particularly of Aldrin, Armstrong and Michael Collins – the men who actually rode atop the Saturn V rocket to the Moon.

The Apollo 11 landing was the culmination of a journey which began with US President John F Kennedy’s 1961 announcement of the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending a US astronaut safely to the Moon before the end of the decade.

Return to the Moon

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