Rocco Petrone, the immigrant son of a couple from the town of Sasso Castalda, near Potenza, was the engineer monitoring the countdown on July 16, 1969 for the launch of the Apollo 11 spacecraft in Cape Canaveral that would take two men to the moon for the first time, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. A mechanic engineer, he was the director of launch operations.

He pronounced the key work "go" kicking off the mission, accomplishing the "American dream" of generations of migrants - a dream that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Half a century later, Matera, the 2019 European capital of culture, has organized an event to remember the Basilicata native called "Matera vista dalla luna" (Matera seen from the moon), in cooperation with the museums of the Basilicata region and the municipal administration.