40 Years Man on the Moon - Start Geocoin

This very special Anniversary coin is dedicated to a very good friend of mine. Robert Michael Smithwick, who formerly worked for NASA and nowadays are preoccupied with developing his "since 1985 and still going strong" astronomy software program called Distant Suns for the iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone. The coin MUST travel out to the town of SAN JOSÉ in CALIFORNIA, USA. It MUST be dropped in a cache in or very near this town and CANNOT leave that cache again, until picked up by Mr. Smithwick. We hope all you very effective geocachers out there will help to obtain this goal and respect the rules for this special coin. NOT TO BE DROPPED IN CACHES UNDER WATER OR IN PLACES THAT REQUIRES CLIMBING GEAR.

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of Project Apollo and the third human voyage to the Moon or Moon orbit. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above. The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Each crewmember of Apollo 11 had made a spaceflight before this mission, making it the third all-veteran crew in manned spaceflight history. Collins was originally slated to be the Command Module Pilot (CMP) on Apollo 8 but was removed when he required surgery on his back and was replaced by Jim Lovell, his backup for that flight. After Collins was medically cleared, he took what would have been Lovell's spot on Apollo 11; as a veteran of Apollo 8, Lovell was transferred to Apollo 11's backup crew, but promoted to backup commander. Position Astronaut Commander Neil Armstrong Second spaceflight Command Module Pilot Michael Collins Second spaceflight Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. Second spaceflight Backup crew Position Astronaut Commander James A. Lovell, Jr Command Module Pilot William A. Anders Lunar Module Pilot Fred W. Haise, Jr In early 1969 Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was delayed past its intended July launch (at which point Anders would be unavailable if needed) and would later join Lovell's crew and ultimately be assigned as the original Apollo 13 CMP.