N.Y.ers over the moon Two astros join in city celebration of historic landing
Two astronauts joined New Yorkers Saturday for a moonlanding party celebrating the Apollo 11 crew that stepped onto the moon 50 years ago and showcased “one peaceful world.”
After getting bumped out of Times Square because of the 98-degree heat, space shuttles Endeavour and Columbia astronaut Winston Scott, retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott and partygoers moved the celebration into the Marriott Marquis hotel to marvel at a giantscreen showing of the Saturn V rocket lifting off in 1969.
“You see a whole different perspective than viewing Earth from here,” said Scott, 68, whose Endeavour mission lifted off in 1996, followed by the Columbia in 1997. “Our Earth is so full of turmoil. Up there you just see peace. It’s one world, one peaceful world from up there and we’re all family.”
Stott, 56, said she was excited by the event because “it speaks to what the legacy is, what the Apollo mission was about, not just going to the moon, or technology. It’s really about bringing together as many people as possible.”
She served as a flight engineer and as mission specialist on two NASA space shuttle missions, spending three months in orbit in 2009. Her last mission was in 2011.
“It’s wonderful,” Stott said. “Just imagine floating around this room, and I dreamed about that in my dreams too … to see the Earth from space that way was overwhelmingly impressive.”
“For me, I think all the work we are doing [is] really important, it’s improving life here on Earth,” she said.
Young revelers were thrilled as well.
“I feel like it kind of made people sit up and say, ‘Hey, we can do something like this,’ ” Carolyn Bean, 19, said of the Apollo 11 mission.
“It was a huge event that made everyone see what science was doing,” added Zoey Platow, 18.