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MOON LANDING FACTS: Apollo 11 at
40
July 16, 1969: The world watched in anticipation as three men were
hurtled skyward in a rocket bound for the moon.
The Apollo 11 launch date had arrived with just months to spare:
Nine years earlier, U.S. President John F. Kennedy had said that by
the end of the decade the country would put a man on the moon
and return him safely to Earth.
Shortly after Kennedy's speech, an intensive effort got under way to
prepare humans for a moon landing.
In January 1963 Neil Armstrong and four other Apollo astronauts
took a field trip to Arizona's Meteor Crater and Sunset Crater, a
dormant volcano. Geologists then briefed the astronauts on how
those Earthly landscapes were similar to what they might encounter
on the moon.
In the years that followed, Apollo crew also toured the Grand
Canyon and spent time testing lunar rovers at Bonito Crater
northeast of Flagstaff, where the rough, rocky surface mimicked
what some geologists thought would exist on the moon.
Geologists flew over Sunset Crater and other landforms in Cessna
182s, taking aerial photos so the astronauts might better
understand the lunar geology they were likely to see.
The Apollo moon-landing program was named for the son of Zeus in Greek mythology, often known as the god of light and the sun.
But the first mission almost brought U.S. moon-landing efforts to an
abrupt end.
On January 27, 1967, a flash fire occurred in the Apollo 1 command
module during a launch simulation, killing the three astronauts
meant to pilot the mission.
"I wasn't sure if we were burying the entire Apollo program or three
of our buddies," Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan said in In the
Shadow of the Moon.
Following an exhaustive investigation into the accident, NASA
issued a report in April 1967 that called for major overhauls of the
Apollo hardware, launch procedures, and quality control.
The program swung back into gear, and by early 1969, Apollo 10
astronauts Alan Shepard and Donald "Deke" Slayton were cruising
over the lunar surface—and grudgingly holding back from diving
down for a landing—as they scoped out the Sea of Tranquility, the
chosen landing spot for Apollo 11.
A few months later, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin, and Michael Collins set off toward the moon.
Moonwalkers
Launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 9:32 a.m. ET
aboard a Saturn V rocket, Apollo 11 included a command module
dubbed Columbia and a lunar lander called the Eagle.
The lander was named after the bald eagle in the mission insignia.
Apollo 11's journey to the moon took three and a half days.
During that time the astronauts "just kind of gazed out the window
at the Earth getting smaller and smaller, did housekeeping things,
checking the spacecraft," Aldrin recalled.
As the craft passed through the shadow of the moon and started its
approach, Aldrin and Armstrong got into the spider-like lunar
module and began their descent.
The landing process didn't go flawlessly. Alarms sounded when the
computer couldn't keep up with the data stream: "Nothing
serious—it was distracting," Aldrin said.
"Neil didn't like what we were heading toward, and we selected a
safer spot alongside a crater with boulders in it. We landed with a
little less fuel than we would have liked to have had, maybe 20
seconds of fuel left."
Aldrin insists that he felt no real fear about landing on the moon.
Nevertheless, he said, "we kind of practiced liftoff [for] the first two
hours. … We both felt that was the most prudent thing to do after
touching down, was to prepare to depart if we had to."
Finally, with half a billion people watching on televisions across the
world, the astronauts emerged from the Eagle to spend another two
hours exploring the lunar surface.
The pair planted an American flag and placed mementos for fallen
peers.
Armstrong uttered his famous first words, reportedly unscripted:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Armstrong and Aldrin logged 21 hours on the moon—spending the
last and longest portion of it trying to sleep in the frigid lander. Then
they lifted off to rendezvous with Collins and Columbia for the return
voyage.