Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins fans of Tintin

This copy of the first English edition ofOn a Marche sur la Lune, from 1959, has long been kept by a NASA collaborator who had it autographed by members of the Apollo 11 mission.

This album, from the original 1959 English edition entitled Explorers on the Moon, belonged for many years to a former NASA employee, from 1965 to the 1980s. He was lucky enough to have it autographed by the heroes of the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, who made history on July 21, 1969. The three astronauts thus confirmed the success of the Tintin albums and the visionary work of Hergé. The Belgian cartoonist and author first had the idea of an album on the theme of the conquest of space back in 1947. He asked his friends Bernard Heuvelmans and cartoonist and journalist Jacques Van Melkebeke for advice. The former, a scientist, had written L’Homme parmi les étoiles in 1944 . It wasn’t until 1950, after much research, that the story was published in Le Journal de Tintin, then in April 1952 for the release of the album Objectif Lune, followed byOn a marché sur la Lune in 1954, featuring Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Tournesol (Calculus in the British version). During this adventure, the unexpected presence of the Dupondts (Detectives Thomson and Thomson in English) and the spy Boris (Jorgen) disrupted the trip, which nevertheless ended with the famous reporter’s first steps on the Moon, before an epic return to Earth !