Man on the Moon (opera) Man on the Moon (opera) Man on the Moon is a 2006 television opera in one act by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Nicholas Wright. It relates the story of the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969 and the subsequent problems experienced by Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. The opera, about 50 minutes long, was commissioned by Channel 4 and first shown on 26 December, 2006. The director was Rupert Edwards. In 2007, it won the Opera Special Prize at the 2007 Festival Rose d'Or in Lucerne, Switzerland. The opera chronicles the
Human spaceflight orbit on March 18, 1965. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) Dec 21–27, 1968, when the Apollo 8 mission took them to 10 orbits around the Moon and back. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space on July 25, 1984. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. Eileen Collins was the first female shuttle pilot, and with shuttle mission STS-93 in 1999 she