First Explorers on the Moon

This article was originally published in the December 1969 issue of the magazine.

(Audio: Hear the 1969 National Geographic recording, Sounds of the Space Age.)

They were eerie, those first electronic beeps. Later came the voices, exultant in the thrill of discovery. Each sound leaping the chasm of space bore to a rapt world the drama of man's venture into the airless void beyond his home planet.

That drama—culminating in the first landing on the moon—comes vividly alive in the special recording, "Sounds of the Space Age, From Sputnik to Lunar Landing," presented to the National Geographic Society's worldwide membership with this issue. Its narrator: Col. Frank Borman, firm friend and eight year member of the Society, whose voice was heard by millions last December when he and his companions in Apollo 8 became the first men to orbit the moon.