The Moon At Last

First leap towards the stars

Human Beings Walk On Another World

Borman’s crew rode the Saturn V into Earth orbit on the morning of December 21, 1968. Within two hours, they had re-ignited the third-stage engine to head out of the Earth’s orbit on a trajectory for the Moon. Sixty-six Earth hours later, just past midnight on December 24, they fired Apollo 8’s main engine and slipped into orbit around the Moon. They spent 20 hours in orbit, making navigation sightings, taking photographs, and beaming pictures to Earth.

The lunar landscape revealed itself to be desolate and covered with meteorite craters. For the astronauts, the most memorable part of the voyage was the sight of the Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon.

To get back to Earth, the Apollo 8 had to travel 235,000 miles, and then fly a precise path through the atmosphere. If the entry were too steep, the forces of deceleration would tear apart the command module. If it were too shallow, the craft would bounce off the atmosphere, and the crew would die in space. On December 27, the Apollo 8 slammed into the atmosphere over the Pacific, on target and on schedule. Then, three main parachutes deployed, and the Apollo 8 splashed down safely. Apollo 9, a test of the Apollo spacecraft, including the lunar module, in Earth orbit, and Apollo 10, a dress rehearsal for the landing mission in lunar orbit, were both successful.

These missions opened the way for Apollo 11 and the first moon landing by a human being. Neil Armstrong was Apollo 11’s commander, Buzz Aldrin, his copilot. Mike Collins was to fly the command module to and from the moon, and for about 30 hours alone in lunar orbit while his crewmembers traveled to and from the surface. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins arrived in lunar orbit on July 19, 1969. The following day, Armstrong and Aldrin transferred into their lunar module, Eagle, checked its systems, and unlocked.

They left Collins in the command module, Columbia. Armstrong and Aldrin fired Eagle’s engines to lower their orbit, then coasted down to 50,000 feet, and re-ignited their engine to begin their final descent. Technical problems then developed. The computer overloaded and threatened to abort the landing; mission control experts were able to fix this. Then, the onboard guidance system began to steer the Eagle toward a stadium-sized crater surrounded by car-sized boulders. At that point, Armstrong took semi-manual control. Armstrong was able to guide the Eagle down the last few feet, despite his vision being blurred by a dust storm that was kicked up by the Eagle’s descent engine. Once the Eagle set down, Armstrong declared to the world, “Houston, Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Once Armstrong and Aldrin got the go-ahead from mission control to stay on the Moon, they prepared to go outside. They put on pressurized spacesuits which contained layers of protection against extreme temperatures and micrometeorites. Underneath, they wore special long underwear that kept its wearer cool by circulating water through a network of tiny tubes. They had special boots to give them steady footing on the lunar dust, reflective visors to screen out harmful sunlight, and lunar gloves that had an outer layer of woven metal fiber. Their backpacks contained oxygen, cooling water, and radio communications, via Eagle, with Earth. Buzz Aldrin poses for Neil Armstrong's camera, with the reflection of one of Eagle's landing legs in his visor. Sunday evening, the men vented the oxygen from the lunar module’s cabin, and opened the hatch.

Armstrong squeezed out of the cabin on his belly. He then pulled a cord to deploy a black-and-white television camera, then descended the Eagle’s ladder. Once he stepped his foot on the ground, he announced, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.” Aldrin arrived on the surface minutes later. The two explored a dusty area of the lunar surface for almost two hours. They raised the American flag, deployed a pair of experiments, and collected rock samples. They were watched by an estimated 600 million people.

Eventually, the two climbed back into their lander and settled in for the night. Meanwhile, Collins remained in lunar orbit, attending to Columbia’s systems. On July 21, the ascent engine carried Armstrong and Aldrin back into lunar orbit, in a path toward the Columbia. From then on, everything went as planned. Three days later, the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific.