Once upon a time there was a man, indeed a hundred, no, thousands, millions of men who one day decided to set off, looking for a new place, a land to explore, a life to build.
There are those who have gone to places they had only heard of, those who have joined friends and relatives, and there are even some, who believing they’ve reached a known land, discover a new world, while others have managed to see the same world from another perspective.
The story of Rocco Petrone, the mechanical engineer who became director of the Apollo Space programme, begins in Basilicata, when in 1921 his parents decided to leave Sasso di Castalda to seek their fortune in the States. Rocco Petrone then came back to Basilicata to work on the projects of the Space Geodesy Centre in Matera, one of the main research centers in Southern Italy, where the study of the Moon follows in the footsteps of the 1969 mission directed by Petrone.
"Matera as seen from the Moon", consisting of ten days of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, was an opportunity to remember that we are all connected and that human beings belongs to a larger community, whose needs and wishes challenge diversities because one person’s story is almost always the story of many.
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