World marks 50 years since the Apollo 11 moon landing

Americans showed their pride over the 1969 moon landing with events across the country. The Washington Monument, a 169-meter (555 feet) pillar of marble in the US capital, was turned into a display with images of the lunar mission and a moving projection of the 111-meter Saturn V rocket, which took the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.

US Vice President Mike Pence (left) praised the Apollo 11 team as "heroes" at a celebration at the US spaceport Cape Canaveral. Half a century ago, a team consisting of pilot Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin (right) and Neil Armstrong took off from the US base to reach Earth's natural satellite. Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, died in 2012.

This picture, taken by Armstrong, shows Aldrin planting a long sheet of foil designed to capture material radiated by the sun. The two men stayed on the lunar surface for a little over 2 1/2 hours. On Saturday, NASA replayed the original broadcast of the landing seen by half a billion people in 1969.

Australians also marked the Apollo 11 anniversary by gathering around the Parkes Radio Telescope for a screening of the 2000 film "The Dish." The movie tells the story of Australians and NASA employees working together and using the Parkes telescope to support the moon landing. Parkes was one of three tracking stations around the world tasked with beaming live pictures of the event.

In Wistow, Leicestershire, east of Birmingham, the owners of an 8-acre maze that attracts more than 25,000 visitors every summer chose to mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landing with a design depicting an astronaut.

Further south in London, the city marked the jubilee by showing a mosaic image of the moon at Piccadilly Circus at the moment of the 1969 touchdown. British artist Helen Marshall created the image out of thousands of photos sent by members of the public. The mosaic was projected simultaneously in London, New York and Singapore.

In Shanghai, an artistic installation by UK artist Luke Jerram shows a high-definition image of the Earth taken in 1972. When people view the installation from 211 meters (about 700 feet) away, it would be exactly the same as the view from the moon in 1969. To make the experience more vivid, there are over 1,000 square meters of simulated moon land, where visitors can leave their footprints.

NASA plans to send new astronauts to the moon by 2024 with its Artemis program, named after the goddess and twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology. The program is set to include a platform that would orbit the moon, called Gateway, with astronauts traveling in the Orion crew capsule (pictured). The ultimate goal, however, is much further away: a journey to Mars.

While the Apollo 11 veterans attended the celebrations in the US, a team of astronauts took off for the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The team includes American Andrew Morgan, Russian Alexander Skvortsov, and Italian Luca Parmitano. The trio modeled their mission patches after the ones used by the famous 1969 team.