And so begins the annual remembrance of the events surrounding Apollo 11, 41 years ago.

On Twitter, a number of people pointed out the magic moment when the crew was told “Go for TLI”, also known as “trans-lunar injection”. That was the signal for the crew to fire themselves out of Earth orbit towards the moon.

But the event is not getting nearly as much attention as last year, the 40th anniversary. I was lucky enough to travel to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to watch Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins give a public talk about their experiences on the spacecraft.

There was also a press conference held at NASA headquarters on the morning of July 20, the exact day when humans first touched the moon. Not to mention many, many websites.

The trouble with humans is we like “fives” and “10s”. I’ve read this might be an evolutionary thing since most of us have five fingers on our hands, so it’s easy for us to think in those units. But if we only remember events like Apollo or warfare or genocide on five-year anniversaries, there’s a risk that we might forget these items altogether.

In the meantime, check out these interesting links from the past week:

• Our understanding of space weather is beginning to change. According to NASA, scientists are starting to think of the Earth and solar environment as interconnected rather than two separate systems, which would help advance the study of solar storms, among other things. (via @egvick)
• I wanna drive a Vette someday. Ads like this, that play to my space geekism, make the desire worse.
• Star Wars on a subway car. Need I say anything else? (via @wired, @markmcc)
• Speaking of Star Wars, here are 19 things you may not have known about it. (via @davidmanly)
• Astronaut Shannon Walker is blogging from orbit in the Houston Chronicle. Pretty heavy stuff. (via @spaceguy87)
• Oh yeah, and the Canadian Space Summit is taking place in Ottawa this year. How handy for me.

Link Love