At 10:56
p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks
these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small
step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing
module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the
moon.
The American
effort to send astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal
President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May
25, 1961: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to Earth.”
At the time,
the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments,
and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy’s bold proposal. In 1966, after five
years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first
unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed
launch vehicle and spacecraft combination.
Then, on
January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,
Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo
spacecraft and Saturn rocket.
Three
astronauts were killed in the fire. Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands
of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned
Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated
systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing.
In December
of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon
and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9tested the lunar module for the first time
while in Earth orbit. Then in May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the
first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled
July landing mission.
At 9:32 a.m.
on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space
Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins
aboard.
Armstrong, a
38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. After
traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11entered into a lunar orbit on
July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by
Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins
remained.
Two hours
later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the
craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility.
Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a famous
message: “The Eagle has landed.”
At 10:39
p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of
the lunar module. As he made his way down the lunar module’s ladder, a
television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the
signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation.
At 10:56
p.m., Armstrong spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly
garbled by his microphone and meant to be “that’s one small step for a man, one
giant leap for mankind.”
He then
planted his left foot on the gray, powdery surface, took a cautious step
forward, and humanity had walked on the moon. “Buzz” Aldrin joined him on the
moon’s surface at 11:11 p.m., and together they took photographs of the
terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, and spoke with
President Richard M. Nixon via Houston.
By 1:11 a.m.
on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was
closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54
p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module.
Among the
items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: “Here men from
the planet Earth first set foot on the moon–July 1969 A.D–We came in peace for
all mankind.”
At 5:35
p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at
12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down
in the Pacific Ocean at 12:51 p.m. on July 24. There would be five more
successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by, Apollo 13.
The last men
to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the
Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. The Apollo
program was a costly and labor intensive endeavor, involving an estimated
400,000 engineers, technicians, and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close
to $100 billion in today’s dollars).
The expense
was justified by Kennedy’s 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and
after the feat was accomplished ongoing missions lost their viability.
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