YORBA LINDA (CNS) - Family-friendly activities educating guests about space, science and technology will be offered today at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Activities include rocket building, programs in a blow-up planetarium about constellations and the opportunity to recreate the photo of Nixon greeting the Apollo 11 crew in the mobile quarantine facility aboard the USS Hornet following their return to Earth.
NASA experts will display an SR-71 spacesuit and conduct a pressurized suit demonstration.
There will be tours of the library's exhibition “Apollo 11: One Giant Leap for Mankind,” featuring instruments used by the astronauts, moon rocks and the Oval Office telephone Nixon used to call the moon.
There will also be a presentation by Doug Paul, the AT&T supervisor who helped make Nixon's call to the moon possible, a screening of the documentary “Apollo 11,” a drone demonstration and opportunities to meet Apollo 11 crew historian Francis French and SpaceX life support systems engineer Jason Silverman.
The museum in Yorba Linda will be open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is free.
“Earth to Moon: The Longest-Distance Phone Call in History,” a presentation reliving Nixon's call to the moon at the time it occurred will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the library's East Room.
White House officials Dwight Chapin, Larry Higby and John Price, who were with Nixon the night he made the call to the moon, will speak at the presentation which will also include a special appearance by Alex Eisenhower, a grandson of Nixon and a great-grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Admission is free. Seating is limited. Reservations are required and can be made at www.eventbrite.com/e/earth-to-moon-celebrating-the-longest- distance-phone-call-in-history-tickets-65727614063
“Richard Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969, but there is no doubt that the highlight of his first year in office was calling the brave astronauts on the moon that summer 50 years ago, as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins proved to the world -- and into history -- that there are no limits to what humankind can achieve when bound together by what President Nixon called `the lift of a driving dream,”' said Hugh Hewitt, president of the Richard Nixon Foundation.
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