After 50 years from the first flight to the moon, Apollo 11 will start again, this time the launch will be broadcasted and shown in the Žižkov Television Tower in Prague.

Arrive on Saturday, July 20 (or Sunday, July 21) at 10 pm to Mahler Park and track the successful rocket mission using video-mapping, which will replicate the actual start of the US crew flight on July 1969.

The event Moon 50: Back To The Moon commemorates the complete space mission – the launch of the rocket, time the astronauts spent on the Moon and their splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Accompanying the program will be the introduction of every Apollo mission- From JFK’s historic speech in 1961 until the last flight to the Moon in 1972.

This unique event in Prague is also happening on a worldwide scale. It came together absolutely spontaneously, from the initial excitement of a few friends who wanted to celebrate this landmark occasion in human history.

Launch of the Žižkov rocket will also repeat at the same time on Sunday, July 21st.

Schedule

• 17:45: Incredible and moving documentary about a young Jewish boy who in a concentration camp imagines himself on the moon and which he draws. His pictures now Orbit in space. (Kind thanks to director Sandra Dickson for approving the screening.)
• 19:00: Jakub Rozehnal – Director of Planetarium Prague, Prof. Petr Kulhánek – popularizer of astrophysics, Jan Spratek from the European Space Education Resource Office and other important guests. Interviews are accompanied by the Prague Film Orchestra
• 22:17: Flight of Apollo 11 to the Moon. Video mapping on the Zizkov Tower.
• 22:30 Movie screening

The Žižkov Tower is the subject of renewed complaints from the Prague Jewish community, which says it is a brooding reminder of the antisemitism of the regime that ruled former Czechoslovakia for more than 40 years and whose dark history needs to be officially recognized.

“Part of our community is still present under the ground here and people should know about it,” said Pavel Vesely, a history and tourism coordinator with the Prague Jewish community. “It reflects our history in the second half of the 20th century, when there was pressure – part state-organized antisemitism, part anti-religion – to erase the remnants of a Jewish presence in Prague. And the communists did a thorough job because if you speak to people visiting the tower, they have no idea a Jewish cemetery was here.”

The TV Tower stands on what was once Prague’s biggest Jewish cemetery, where rabbis, distinguished scholars and leading industrialists, among others, were laid to rest, while some graves remains were reburied in other cemeteries, others were reportedly dumped in a landfill site outside Prague, in violation of Jewish law forbidding the disinterment of buried bodies.

The cemetery’s oldest section survived the developments and remains in relative obscurity at one end of the square, Jewish community leaders having spent heavily to rescue it from the decay it had fallen into during the communist period.

Anna Tumova, a spokesperson for České Radiokomunikace, the tower’s owners, said the company had not been approached, but that it would consider any proposal for a memorial. A plaque on the body of the tower itself would need permission from its architect, Václav Aulický.