Who is Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr., January 20, 1930) is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first lunar landing. On July 20, 1969, he was the second person to set foot on the Moon, following his mission commander, Neil Armstrong.

The Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, the third lunar mission of NASA's Apollo Program was crewed by Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited in the Command Module.NASA Apollo 11 Timeline.

The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.""Man on the moon: Kennedy speech ignited the dream" CNN.com.

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is , about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The common centre of mass of the system (the barycentre) is located at about ?a quarter the Earth's radius?beneath the surface of the Earth. The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth every 27.3 days. More accurately, the Moon's mean sidereal period (fixed star to fixed star) is 27.321661 days (27d 07h 43m 11.5s), and its mean tropical orbital period (from equinox to equinox) is 27.321582 days (27d 07h 43m 04.7s) (Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Ephemeris, 1961, at p.107). (the orbital period), and the periodic variations in the geometry of the Earth?Moon?Sun system are responsible for the phases of the Moon, which repeat every 29.5 daysMore accurately, the Moon's mean synodic period (between mean solar conjunctions) is 29.530589 days (29d 12h 44m 02.9s) (Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Ephemeris, 1961, at p.107). (the synodic period).

The Moon's diameter is , a little more than a quarter of that of the Earth. Thus, the Moon's surface area is less than a tenth of the Earth (about a quarter of Earth's land area, approximately as large as Russia, Canada, and the United States combined), and its volume is about 2 percent that of Earth. The pull of gravity at its surface is about 17 percent of that at the Earth's surface.

The Moon is the only celestial body on which human beings have made a manned landing. While the Soviet Union's Luna programme was the first to reach the Moon with unmanned spacecraft, the NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned missions to date, beginning with the first manned lunar mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972 ? the first being Apollo 11 in 1969. Human exploration of the Moon temporarily ceased with the conclusion of the Apollo program, although a few robotic landers and orbiters have been sent to the Moon since that time. The U.S. has committed to return to the Moon by 2018. On November 13, 2009, NASA announced the discovery of proof that water exists on the Moon, based on data obtained from the LCROSS lunar impact mission.http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/11/13/water.moon.nasa/index.html