The error of the onboard computer was in the worst moment: nearly 400 000 miles from Earth when the space shuttle-like spin only a few kilometers above the lunar surface floated. Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin prepared just before the landing, as schrillte the alarm, and the computer screen appeared the ominous message "1202". 1202 - what did this mean? None of the two astronauts knew the answer.

In the Control Center in Houston rush broke out. The navigation software is not working properly, so much was clear. But what to do? The ferry landing immediately zurückbeordern? Or risk that it bursts at the moon? Verrannen seconds of uncertainty, then the experts gave the green light: "1202" said only that the processor was just overloaded. The descent was continued until the fuel for almost half a minute passed. In the last few seconds literally sat on Armstrong and Aldrin. On 20 July 1969, 40 years ago, humans first landed on a foreign celestial body.

The event marked a generation.

Everything now seemed to be possible: A moon station, flights to Mars and a space-tourism were seen as mass reach. None of this was true. The lunar adventure ended in 1972, then flew no man more nearly as deep into space inside.

Admittedly, the U.S. space agency NASA for a return Erdtrabanten, but experts doubt whether the project is ever realized. How could it happen that the human space flight, despite all technological progress in the orbit steckenblieb?

Apollo program soon

Has failed the American lunar program ultimately on your own success. With the flight of Apollo 11 Armstrong, Aldrin and capsule-pilot Michael Collins was the mission, U.S. President John F. Kennedy on 25 May 1961 had given: before the end of the decade probably keep a man to the moon and back to bring. "The problem was that there was thus a specific target had," says the New York astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. "The moon would be only the beginning may be, but the Apollo program was only as a race designed it" - against the Soviet Union.

And when the race was run, then it is also gone. In quick succession her verschoss the Nasa moon rocket material. The public interest went out quickly, and it flickered only once, in 1970 when Apollo 13 mission because of an oxygen tank exploded almost ended in disaster. Already entered 1972 with Apollo 17 on the sixth and last time people Erdtrabanten.