First Moon Landing
55 years ago, on 20th July 1969, the first manned moon landing took place by NASA with Apollo 11. What many people don’t realise is that over 24 innovations from Switzerland were involved. The USA only allowed Switzerland to supply products for this mission.
 
Moonwalkers
A walk on the moon - 12 astronauts, the moonwalkers, were able to experience this. Four of them are still alive. The youngest person to walk on the moon was 36 years old at the time: astronaut Charlie Duke from Apollo 16, who was the 10th moonwalker to set foot on the moon on 20th April 1972. Charlie Duke also holds the speed record on the moon, which he set with the Moon Rover. He travelled across the moon at 17 km/h with an electric vehicle that was designed for a maximum speed of 5 km/h. And on 16th November 24, he will talk about his experiences on the moon in THE HALL.
 
Swiss Astronauts
The first Swiss astronaut was Claude Nicollier. He was part of the ESA team and completed four space flights with the Space Shuttle. He began his career as a military pilot in the Swiss Air Force. We are also celebrating his 80th birthday on this occasion.
Marco Sieber from Switzerland completed his astronaut training in April 2024 and joined the ESA team as a new astronaut. This makes him Switzerland's second astronaut and he will probably have the chance to fly to the moon in 7-12 years' time. On 16th November 2024, he will be training for extravehicular activities (EVA) in Houston/USA.
 
Switzerland Leads the Way in Unmanned Space Exploration
Switzerland is one of the leading nations in unmanned space research. The University of Bern was involved in the development of the solar wind sail for the first manned moon landing by Apollo 11 and four other Apollo moon landing missions. Under the leadership of astrophysicist and space researcher Prof. em. Dr Kathrin Altwegg, it also built research equipment that was launched in a probe on the ESA's Rosetta mission in 2004 and landed precisely on a comet for the first time on 12th November 2014 after a 10-year flight through space.
 
ETH Zurich was able to win over the Swiss and former long-time NASA Science Director Prof Dr Thomas Zurbuchen for Switzerland. On 18th February 2021, he landed a rover and its helicopter drone on Mars on a parachute as part of NASA’s ‘Perseverance’ mission. As a world and space premiere created by human hands, a missile has been made to fly on another planet for the first time: the ‘Ingenuity’ helicopter drone on Mars. From the rocket to the rover to the drone, innovations and products from Switzerland were included. A large part of the drone was developed at ETH Zurich. At the beginning of 2022, Prof Zurbuchen placed the James Webb Space Telescope in space. He has been Head of the new Department of Space Science and Technology since summer 2023. From September 2024, ETH Zurich Space will be offering a new Master’s degree in Space Systems.