Countdown to Epic Apollo 11 Celebration

Did you know Americans left the Earth 49 years ago this week to make the first moon landing on a rocket designed and largely built in Alabama? Did you know Americans are going back on a rocket being developed now in the Rocket City of Huntsville?
If you somehow didn’t know, or even if you did, here’s some news: Huntsville has a huge 50th anniversary celebration of that earlier historic launch planned for you in the golden anniversary year of 2019. It’s starting soon as a countdown, and it will also be a climax of Alabama’s own 200th birthday celebration in 2019.
City leaders met beneath the Saturn V at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Monday to announce a stream of events leading up to the 50th anniversary of the liftoff of the Saturn V carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon. That launch was July 16, 1969.
“And we’re going party like it’s 1969,” said Dr. Deborah Barnhart, rocket center CEO and chair of the golden anniversary committee.
July 20, 1969 was the day humans first stepped on the moon, and Barnhart said that will be a huge celebration with a lot of national attention on Cape Canaveral, Houston and Washington.
“But the launch day was July 16, and we’re going to claim launch day as our own,” Barnhart said of Huntsville.
“The great thing is Huntsville played a pivotal role in taking us to the moon, making these engines right here,” Mayor Tommy Battle said gesturing at the F-1 engines above him on the rocket center’s Saturn V. “And today we’re working on a pivotal role in producing the new engines that will take us back into deep space, to the moon and to Mars.”
There will be daily moon landing re-enactments at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, panel discussions citywide, classic car shows, a “big homecoming dinner” at the rocket center next summer, concerts, special exhibits at the Huntsville Museum of Art and a “Dancing in the Streets” party Friday night, July 19, 2019, 50 years from day of the moon landing.
Special honorary chairpersons for the event will be the family of Dr. Wernher von Braun, who led NASA’s Apollo development in Alabama.
The committee is also asking “everyone, every club, every company, every church, every synagogue, every social and professional group to plan and celebrate in the way that’s most fun and most meaningful to you,” Barnhart said.
Planners hope all of those events will be logged on to the tourism bureau’s website to create a public calendar of events.