At 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, NASA said the engines for Apollo 11 fired, and the craft cleared the launch tower at the Kennedy Space Center. Three astronauts were sitting in the rocket that took them to space and eventually, the moon.
Those astronauts who made history were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. They sat in the three-stage, 363-foot Saturn V rocket which was engineered at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
July 16, 1969. And we’re off!! Liftoff from Launch Pad 39A.
Wave good-bye to all your friends and supporters before you head for the launch pad
Buzz, Neil, and Mike look very relaxed as they talk to reporters in a virtual press conference on July 14
Neil A. Armstrong, commander for the Apollo 11 Moon-landing mission, practices for the historic event in a lunar module simulator in the Flight Crew Training Building at Kennedy. Accompanying Armstrong on the Moon flight were Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. Image credit: NASA
The American flag heralded the launch of Apollo 11, the first Lunar landing mission, on July 16, 1969. The massive Saturn V rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin at 9:32 a.m. EDT. Four days later, on July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon’s surface.
Lady Bird, LBJ, and VP Agnew in the VIP stands
The S-1C booster for the Apollo 11 Saturn V waits inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Image credit: NASA
The Apollo 11 crew await pickup by a helicopter from the USS Hornet, prime recovery ship for the historic lunar landing mission. The fourth man in the life raft is a United States Navy underwater demolition team swimmer. All four men are wearing biological isolation garments. The Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin aboard splashed down at 11:49 a.m. CDT, July 24, 1969, about 812 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii and only 12 nautical miles from the USS Hornet. Image Credit: NASA
Once aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, Mike, Neil, and Buzz wearing their BIGs walk the 10 steps from the Recovery One helicopter to the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF), with NASA flight surgeon Dr. William Carpentier, in orange suit, following behind
12 minutes after take-off, the crew of the Apollo 11 entered Earth’s orbit.
After one and a half orbits, the crew received a ‘go’ for what mission controllers call “ Translunar Injection .” In simple terms, it means it is time to head to the moon.
The translunar injection took three days. A day following that, Armstrong and Aldrin climbed into the lunar module Eagle and began their descent to the moon. Collins orbited in the commanded module Columbia .
The NASA website says when it was time for the Eagle to be set down, there was a computer malfunction that caused Armstrong to improvise and descend the craft manually. NASA says this was because the computer was trying to do “ too many things at once .”
The Eagle landed on the moon at 4:17 p.m. EDT. Armstrong radioed “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
At 10:56 p.m. EDT, Armstrong planted the first human foot on another world. With an estimated more than half a billion people watching on TV, he climbed down the ladder and said a phrase that lives in the history books forever.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Aldrin joined him shortly after and said the moon’s surface was a “magnificent desolation.” The two men explored the surface of the moon for about two and a half hours collecting samples and taking photos.
They left behind an American flag, a patch honoring those lost in the Apollo 1 crew and a plaque on one of the Eagle’s legs.
NASA says the plaque reads, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
The men splashed back onto Earth on July 24, 1969.
The mission led to 10 astronauts following in their footsteps over three and a half years. Armstrong said the flight was the “beginning of a new age.”
With the Artemis program, NASA plans to put four astronauts on the moon with the Artemis III mission in 2026 . This will mark humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years.
For more on the Apollo 11 mission, you can visit NASA’s website here .
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