Artigenda
Moon Day
When: annually, July 20.
Every year, the world commemorates the first moon landing and the moon as Earth’s only satellite on Moon Day on July 20.
First man on the moon
On July 20, 1969, Niel Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. To commemorate this event, July 20 is Moon Day.
UTC
Actually, for us in Europe, Moon Day should take place on 21 July because of the time difference. The American version of Moon Day (National Moon Day) does take place on the correct day: 20 July. Because of the time difference with the United States, the events took place in the middle of the night with us, i.e. on 21 July 1969. Only we adjust: the time kept in this case was 20:17:39 UTC, or Universal Time Coordinated. Coordinated world time. The only drawback is: that it only formally did not exist in 1969. So actually this should have been GMT, Greenwich Mean Time because that was its predecessor. Standard time UTC is the successor to GMT. You can read more about it via this Wikipedia page1.
OK, 20 or 21 July: it’s about the first landing on the moon, which makes it Moon Day. With that, it is not even about those words “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was decided that the day would be about this celestial body and all human discoveries, regardless of the country. You can read that at this United Nations page.
Play Video about Moon landing
UNOOSA
The UN has a separate organisation that deals with space-related matters. That is the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). Probably not as well known as other space organisations such as NASA, ESA, Roskosmos or China National Space Administration (CNSA).
This day is not only to reflect on history. It’s also to look ahead, towards the future. How must mankind deal with the moon and all other celestial bodies that humans might one day travel to? People were already thinking about that in the 1970s, as you can read here. The central question was how we could ensure that we would not make such a mess in the universe as we do here on Earth. A question that so far has not been provided with a very clear answer.
1: This section was produced thanks to a translation of the Dutch text. Artigenda. This is the time zone applicable to the Netherlands, i.e. the UTC zone.
