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WATCH: Apollo 11 astronaut returns to launch pad 50 years later

By The Associated Press

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins returned Tuesday to the exact spot where he and two other astronauts flew to the moon 50 years ago.

At NASA’s invitation, Michael Collins spent the golden anniversary at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida. He marked the precise moment — 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969 — that their Saturn V rocket departed on humanity’s first moon landing. Buzz Aldrin was an unexplained no-show. Mission commander Neil Armstrong — who took the first lunar footsteps — died in 2012.

Collins said he wished Aldrin and Armstrong could have shared the moment at the pad.

See video below:

WTOP photo tour: Historic nuclear power plant at Fort Belvoir to be dismantled

By Neal Augenstein
The red button was always there — just in case. Most people never knew the United States' first nuclear power reactor to provide sustained electricity to a commercial power grid was — and is — on the grounds of Fort Belvoir, the U.S. Army installation in Fairfax County, Virginia.
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