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APOLLO 11

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

– Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11.

“This has a stark beauty all its own. It’s like the high desert of the United States.”

– Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11.

Thirty years ago, three men — Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins — took humanity on an incredible voyage. On July 20, 1969, the world watched in awe as man landed on the moon for the first time.

Thus ended a quest costing billions of dollars and involving more than 300,000 people beginning in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced the goal “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Many believed the Russians would be first in the race to put a person on the moon, but the United States surprised skeptics. The result was the most widely shared adventure in history, with more than 600 million people watching the first ghostly televised images of Armstrong leaving his imprint in the powdery moon soil.

Apollo 11 was a technological triumph of the highest order. Just 66 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, astronauts traveled almost a million miles in eight days to land on the moon and return to Earth. But above all, Apollo 11 was a triumph of the human spirit. As Aldrin said in a TV broadcast while returning home from the moon, “This has been far more than three men on a voyage to the moon … This stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.”

– THE LAUNCH

July 16, 8:32 a.m. CDT Apollo 11 takes off under clear skies from Cape Kennedy, Fla., reaching an altitude of over 120 miles and a speed of 17,400 miles per hour in less than 11 minutes. The first two stages of Saturn V drop into the Atlantic Ocean, and less than three hours after leaving the ground, the third stage ignites, sending the craft on a direct path to the moon, approximately 230,000 miles away.

11:49 a.m. Traveling at a maximum speed of 24,300 m.p.h., the Apollo crew performs the first critical maneuver of the mission: separating Columbia from the rest of the spacecraft and reversing position in order to dock head-to-head with the Eagle, still tucked inside the spacecraft. Eagle and Columbia separate from the third stage and continue to the moon.

– THE APPROACH

July 19, 11:58 a.m.

Three days later, Apollo reaches the moon after an uneventful trip, during which the astronauts monitor the spacecraft and rest. Two hundred miles above the moon, rockets are fired to slow the spacecraftto 3,600 m.p.h. Lunar gravity captures Apollo and it enters an orbit 60 miles above the moon.

– THE LANDING

July 20, 12:46 p.m.

After 14 orbits around the moon, the Eagle, with Armstrong and Aldrin inside, separates from Columbia.

2:08 p.m. After releasing the Eagle’s landing gear, Aldrin and Armstrong begin their descent, made up of two separate burns. The first burn drops the Eagles altitude to 50,000 feet, after which Armstrong looks out the window and times the passage of landmarks below.

3:05 p.m. When the second burn begins, the Eagle is oriented away from the moon. But, three minutes into the descent Armstrong rotates the spacecraft to a face-up position. Now, he and Aldrin fly with their backs to the moon so that, as they approach the landing site and the Eagle begins to rotate upright, Armstrong can see the ground ahead and pick a clear landing spot.

3:10 p.m. At 6,000 feet the crew encounters one of the few potentially serious problems in the flight. Two caution lights go off. Flight controller Steve Bales in Houston quickly recognizes them as non-threatening and the mission proceeds. Had Bales not responded so promptly the lunar landing would have been aborted.

3:13 p.m. The computer, on autopilot, pitches the Eagle nearly upright, and Armstrong gets his first close-up view of the landing site, a field of boulders in a crater the size of a football field. The Eagle has enough fuel for five more minutes of flight. Two minutes after pitchover and about two minutes before landing Armstrong takes action to find another landing spot.

3:18 p.m. After switching to manual control, Armstrong decides to fly over the crater, pitching Eagle forward and flying it like a helicopter. Within seconds, he slows his rate of descent from about 20 feet per second to 3 and flies the Eagle about 1,100 feet west of the crater. As they come down through 75 feet, Houston radios that the Eagle has 60 seconds of fuel left. Forty seconds later, Armstrong announces: “The Eagle has landed.”

– THE MOON WALK

9:56 p.m. After preparing the craft for immediate departure in case of emergency, Armstrong crawls out of the Eagle feet first and descends the ladder. From the bottom rung, Armstrong makes a 3-foot jump down to the footpad, a couple inches off the surface, before taking his first step. In the 2 hours, 31 minutes Armstrong and Aldrin spend walking on the moon, they raise an American flag, deploy three experiments, gather 47 pounds of samples, and hammer two short core tubes into the soil. They take about 100 color photographs, receive an unexpected phone call from President Richard Nixon and, finally, get themselves and the samples back into the Eagle.

– THE RETURN

July 21, 12:54 p.m. Twenty-one hours and 36 minutes after the Eagle landed, the top half of the craft lifts the astronauts off the moon. The bottom half, used as a launching pad, is left behind.

4:35 p.m. Once the Eagle reaches an altitude of 60 miles, it enters a lunar orbit alongside Columbia and docks. Twenty-eight hours after leaving Collins, the astronauts are reunited and the Eagle is jettisoned. At 11:56 p.m., Columbia begins the long trip back to Earth.

July 24, 11:21 a.m. Before entry into the Earths atmosphere, the service module is jettisoned. Eight days, 3 hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff, the Apollo 11 crew splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, 825 miles southwest of Hawaii and 13 miles from the recovery ship.