At 2:56 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time on July 21, 1969, humans for the first time stepped onto another world. It was a kind of awakening. More than 500 million people around the world watched the event live on television — the largest-ever broadcast audience at the time — and tens of millions more listened on the radio. All with the same perspective: of the moon, symbol of the unattainable, attained; and of our own Earth, a pale blue dot in the vast emptiness of space.

Most people alive today were not yet born when the Apollo 11 mission took place and have no direct memory of it. Even for those who do recall, it’s easy to forget that Apollo unfolded during one of the most turbulent periods in our nation’s history. Many Americans felt strongly that other concerns — poverty, education, civil rights — should take precedence. Polls put the space program at or near the top of the list of federal programs that people thought should be abolished. The mission’s success nonetheless became synonymous with our potential as a species. If we could put a man on the moon, we could accomplish anything.

How best to celebrate this complex history, and the role of The New York Times in covering it? All month the reporters and editors of the Times’s science desk have been publishing articles, essays, photo galleries and even a poem reflecting on the legacy of Apollo 11, and on the promise and challenges of a new era of space exploration.