6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.com

Hello this is 6 minute English from BBC learning English. I'm Neil and I'm Georgie. That's one small step for man, one

giant leap for mankind. Famous words, but do you know who said them? Of course that was

Neil Armstrong, the first person to land on the moon.

Right the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed Neil Armstrong on the moon on the 20th of July

1969 but in decades after that famous event, interest in returning to the moon faded away.

Until now.

Summer 2023 saw the start of a new race for the moon between Russia's lunar 25 spacecraft and

India's Chandraan 3.

Russia's rocket crashed on landing, but Chandrayan 3 successfully touched down on the 23rd of August, making

India only the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon.

But why this sudden interest in going back to the moon? That's what we'll be discussing in this

program and as usual we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary too.

But before we blast off I have a question for you Georgie. Everyone

knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon and was followed by a

second astronaut Buzz Aldrin, But who was the third Apollo astronaut who

flew the command module while his crew mates walked on the moon?

Was it A. Eury Garin? B. Michael Collins or C. Alan Shepard.

Hmm. I think it was Michael Collins.

Okay, Georgie, we'll find out the answer at the end of the program.

In some ways, the current interest in the Moon is really more about the origins of Earth.

One theory is that during the early days of the solar system, around 4 billion years ago,

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