On This Day:
The First
Man on the
Moon July 20th 1969
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By Francess O’Donnell
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Contents
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4
Launch
6
First man on the moon
8
Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon
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First men to walk on the moon
12
Moon disaster speach
14
Perfect Landing
16
Splashed down in mid Pacific
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Timeline of events
16th July 1996
Launched from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 in Merritt Island, Florida on July 16, Apollo 11 was the fifth manned mission, and the third lunar mission, of NASA’s Apollo program.
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Launch from Kennedy Space Centre
T-25 Seconds
T-15 Seconds
Ignition Start Sequence
aturn
30 Seconds Encounting
12,11,10,9
All Engines Running
6,5,4,3,2,1,0
Lift Off!
We Have Lift Off! 5
16th July 1996
Apollo 11: The First Man on the Moon Mission Objective:
Perform manned lunar landing and return mission safely. At 9:32 a.m. Eastern daylight time on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 left Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, bound for the moon. The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is the NASA installation that has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968.
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The First Man on the Moon
“Here men from the planet earth first set foot on the moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” Additional flight objectives included scientific exploration by the lunar module, or LM, crew; deployment of a television camera to transmit signals to Earth; and deployment of a solar wind composition experiment, seismic experiment package and a Laser Ranging Retroreflector. During the exploration, the two astronauts were to gather samples of lunar-surface materials for return to Earth. They also were to extensively photograph the lunar terrain, the deployed scientific equipment, the LM spacecraft, and each other, both with still and motion picture cameras. This was to be the last Apollo mission to fly a “free-return” trajectory, which would enable, if necessary, a ready abort of the mission when the combined command and service module/lunar module, or CSM/LM, prepared for insertion into lunar orbit. The trajectory would occur by firing the service propulsion subsystem, or SPS, engine so as to merely circle behind the moon and emerge in a trans-Earth return trajectory. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit at 1:28 p.m. 7
EDT on July 19. During the second lunar orbit a live color telecast of the lunar surface was made. A second service-propulsion-system burn placed the spacecraft in a circularized orbit, after which astronaut Aldrin entered the LM for two hours of housekeeping including a voice and telemetry test and an oxygen-purge-system check. At 8:50 a.m. July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin reentered the LM and checked out all systems. They performed a maneuver at 1:11 p.m. to separate the LM from the CSM and began the descent to the moon. The LM touched down on the moon at 4:18 p.m. EDT July 20. Armstrong reported to mission control at MSC “Houston, Tranquillity Base here - the Eagle has landed.” (Eagle was the name given to the Apollo 11 LM; the CSM was named Columbia.) Man’s first step on the moon was taken by Armstrong at 10:56 p.m. EDT. As he stepped onto the surface of the moon, Armstrong described the feat as “one small step for a man - one giant leap for mankind.”
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Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon
ARMSTRONG: All set. O.K., you saw what difficulties I was having. I’ll try to watch your PLSS [portable life-support system] from underneath here.
ALDRIN: Are you ready for me to come out?
ARMSTRONG: It has a stark beauty all its own. It’s like much of the high desert of the United States. It’s different, but it’s very pretty out here.
ALDRIN: That looks beautiful from here, Neil.
ARMSTRONG: This is very interesting. It’s a very soft surface, but here and there where I plug with the contingency sample collector, I run into a very hard surface, but it appears to be very cohesive material of the same sort. I’ll try to get a rock in here. Here’s a couple.
ALDRIN: O.K., going to get the contingency sample now, Neil?
ARMSTRONG: O.K., it’s quite dark here in the shadow and a little hard for me to see that I have good footing. I’ll work my way over into the sunlight here without looking directly into the sun.
20th July 1996
9
ALDRIN: Yep. Very small, sparkly ...
ARMSTRONG: Find a purple rock?
ALDRIN: ... The rocks are rather slippery ... Have to be careful that you are leaning in the direction you want to go ... You have to cross your foot over to stay underneath where your center of mass is. And, Neil, didn’t I say we might see some purple rocks?
ARMSTRONG: Isn’t that something? Magnificent sight out here ... Isn’t it fun?
ALDRIN: Beautiful view.
ARMSTRONG: There you go.
ALDRIN: That’s our home for the next couple of hours and we want to take good care of it ... That’s a very simple matter to hop down from one step to the next.
ARMSTRONG: particularly good thought.
ALDRIN: Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch. Making sure not to lock it.
20th July 1996
CAPCOM: Roger, Tranquillity. We copy. Over.
COLLINS: Sounds like it looks a lot better now than it did yesterday at that very low sun angle. It looked rough as a cob then.
The astronauts begin preparations to leave the LM, first having made a detailed check of their craft to make sure all is in order for eventual lift-off. Armstrong will be the first out, about 6 1/2 hours after the landing. .
ARMSTRONG: [Outside the] window is a relatively level plain cratered with a fairly large number of craters of the five- to fifty foot variety and some ridges, small, twenty, thirty feet high, I would guess, and literally thousands of little one- and two-foot craters around the area. We see some angular blocks out several hundred feet in front of us that are probably two feet in size and have angular edges. There is a hill in view, just ... ahead of us, difficult to estimate but might be a half a mile or a mile. ALDRIN: ... I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way. Over.
ARMSTRONG: The hatch is coming open. ALDRIN: Neil, you’re lined up nicely. Toward me a little bit. O.K., down. ARMSTRONG: How am I doing? ALDRIN: You’re doing fine. ARMSTRONG: O.K., Houston, I’m on the porch.
CAPCOM: (now Astronaut Bruce McCandless): Man, we’re getting a picture on the TV.
ALDRIN: Oh, you got a good picture, huh?
ARMSTRONG: I’m at the foot of the ladder. The LM [lunar module] footpads are only depressed in the surface about one or two inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder. Now and then it’s very fine. I’m going to step off the LM now. That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. CAPCOM: There’s a great deal of contrast in it, and currently it’s upside down on our monitor, but we can make out a fair amount of detail. ... O.K., Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now. 10
First men to walk on the moon
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first men to walk on the moon The spacecraft entered lunar orbit at 1:28 p.m. EDT on July 19. During the second lunar orbit a live color telecast of the lunar surface was made. A second service-propulsion-system burn placed the spacecraft in a circularized orbit, after which astronaut Aldrin entered the LM for two hours of housekeeping including a voice and telemetry test and an oxygen-purge-system check. At 8:50 a.m. July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin reentered the LM and checked out all systems. They performed a maneuver at 1:11 p.m. to separate the LM from the CSM and began the descent to the moon. The LM touched down on the moon at 4:18 p.m. EDT July 20. Armstrong reported to mission control at MSC, “Houston, Tranquillity Base here - the Eagle has landed.” (Eagle was the name given to the Apollo 11 LM; the CSM was named Columbia.) Man’s first step on the moon was taken by Armstrong at 10:56 p.m. EDT. As he stepped onto the surface of the moon, Armstrong described the feat as “one small step for a man - one giant leap for mankind.”Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface of the moon at 11:15 p.m. July 20. The astronauts unveiled a plaque mounted on a strut of the LM and read to a worldwide TV audience, “Here men from the planet earth first set foot on the moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” After raising the American flag and talking to President Nixon by radiotelephone, the two astronauts deployed the lunar surface experiments assigned to the mission and gathered 22 kilograms of samples of lunar soil and rocks. They then reentered the LM and closed the hatch at 1:11 a.m. July 21. All lunar extravehicular activities were televised in black-and-white. Meanwhile, Collins continued orbiting moon alone in CSM Columbia.
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20th July 1996
Nixon’s Speach If Apollo 11 Mission Had Failed
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In the Event of Moon Disaster
“
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.These brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations.In modern times, we do much the same but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied but these men were the first and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
”
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20th July 1996
on the moon after perfect landing Neil Armstrong skilfully set the lunar module Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquility and reported, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” For the next 10 minutes Armstrong and Aldrin were occupied with several post-landing procedures, reconfiguring switches and systems. Armstrong found time to report to Mission Control what he had been too busy to tell them during the landing: that he had manually flown the lunar module over the rockstrewn crater where the automatic landing system was taking it. Then he made his first quick-look science report:
“We’ll get to the details of what’s around here, but it looks like a collection of just about every variety of shape, angularity, granularity, about every variety of rock you could find. . . . There doesn’t appear to be too much of a general color at all. However, it looks as though some of the rocks and boulders, of which there are quite a few in the near area, it looks as though they’re going to have some interesting colors to them. . . . “ After giving Houston as many clues as he could to the location of their module, he added some more description:
“The area out the left-hand window is a relatively level plain cratered with a fairly large number of craters of the 5- to 50-foot variety, and some ridges - small, 20, 30 feet high, I would guess, and literally thousands of little 1- and 2-foot craters around the area. We see some angular blocks out several hundred feet in front of us that are probably 2 feet in size and have angular edges. There is a hill in view, just about on the ground track ahead of us. Difficult to estimate, but might be half a mile or a mile. “ 14
Perfect landing
Armstrong and Aldrin then started preparing their spacecraft for takeoff, setting up critical systems to be ready in case something happened and they had to leave the lunar surface quickly. “The area out the left-hand window is a relatively level plain cratered with a fairly large number of craters of the 5- to 50foot variety, and some ridges - small, 20, 30 feet high, I would guess, and literally thousands of little 1- and 2-foot craters around the area. We see some angular blocks out several hundred feet in front of us that are probably 2 feet in size and have angular edges. There is a hill in view, just about on the ground track ahead of us. Difficult to estimate, but might be half a mile or a mile. “ Armstrong and Aldrin then started preparing their spacecraft for takeoff, setting up critical systems to be ready in case something happened and they had to leave the lunar surface quickly. The words are contained in a typed document entitled “In the event of Moon disaster” which was consigned to an archive until now – almost 40 years since the historic mission. It is dated July 18, 1969 – two days before the landing was due – and was prepared by Nixon’s speech writer, Bill Safire, and sent to White House chief of staff Harry Haldeman.However, following the success of the mission, it was laid aside in Nixon’s private papers in America’s national archives.Once the speech had been delivered, Mission Control would have closed communications and a clergyman would have conducted a burial service.
ALDRIN: O.K., going to get the contingency sample now, Neil? ARMSTRONG: This is very interesting. It’s a very soft surface, but here and there where I plug with the contingency sample collector, I run into a very hard surface, but it appears to be very cohesive material of the same sort. I’ll try to get a rock in here. Here’s a couple. ALDRIN: That looks beautiful from here, Neil. ARMSTRONG: It has a stark beauty all its own. It’s like much of the high desert of the United States. It’s different, but it’s very pretty out here. ALDRIN: Are you ready for me to come out? ARMSTRONG: All set. O.K., you saw what difficulties I was having. I’ll try to watch your PLSS [portable life-support system] from underneath here. ALDRIN: Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch. Making sure not to lock it. ARMSTRONG: A particularly good thought. ALDRIN: That’s our home for the next couple of hours and we want to take good care of it ... That’s a very simple matter to hop down from one step to the next. ARMSTRONG: There you go. ALDRIN: Beautiful view. ARMSTRONG: Isn’t that something? Magnificent sight out here ... Isn’t it fun? ALDRIN: ... The rocks are rather slippery ... Have to be careful that you are leaning in the direction you want to go ... You have to cross your foot over to stay underneath where your center of mass is. And, Neil, didn’t I say we might see some purple rocks? ARMSTRONG: Find a purple rock? ALDRIN: Yep. Very small, sparkly ...
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24th July 1996
In the early morning hours of July 24, 8 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes, and 18 seconds after leaving Kennedy Space Center, Columbia plopped down into the Pacific Ocean about 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) south of Johnston Island. Recovery crews from the U.S.S. Hornet arrived quickly and tossed the biological isolation garments into the spacecraft. After the cocooned astronauts emerged from the spacecraft the swimmers swabbed the hatch down with Betadine (an organic iodine solution); then astronauts and recovery personnel decontaminated each other’s protective garments with sodium hypochlorite solution. The biological isolation garments were not uncomfortable in the recovery raft, but aboard the helicopter they began accumulating heat. Both Collins and Armstrong felt that they were approaching the limit of their tolerance by the time they reached the ship. An hour after splashdown they were inside the mobile quarantine facility. As soon as they had changed into clean flight suits, the astronauts went to the large window at the rear end of the mobile quarantine facility to accept the nation’s congratulations from President Nixon, who had flown out to the Hornet to meet them.
60 Hours 24
Meanwhile, recovery crews brought Columbia on board and connected it to the astronauts’ temporary home by means of a plastic tunnel. Through this, the film magazines and sample return containers were taken into the quarantine trailer, then passed out through a decontamination lock. Sample return container no. 2, holding the documented sample, was packed in a shipping container along with film magazines and tape recorders and flown to Johnston Island, where it was immediately loaded aboard a C-141 aircraft and dispatched to Ellington Air Force Base near MSC. Six and a half hours later the other sample return container was flown to Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, and thence to Houston. The words are contained in a typed document entitled “In the event of Moon disaster” which was consigned to an archive until now – almost 40 years since the historic mission. It is dated July 18, 1969 – two days before the landing was due – and was prepared by Nixon’s speech writer, Bill Safire, and sent to White House chief of staff Harry Haldeman.
Kilometres
8
Days
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Splashed down in mid Pacific
“Apollo 11 Splashed Down in Mid Pacific ” Collins: Roger. This trip of ours to the Moon may have looked, to you, simple or easy. I’d like to assure you that has not been the case. The Saturn V rocket which put us into orbit is an incredibly complicated piece of machinery, every piece of which worked flawlessly. This computer up above my head has a 38,000-word vocabulary, each word of which has been very carefully chosen to be of the utmost value to us, the crew. This switch which I have in my hand now, has over 300 counterparts in the Command Module alone, this one single switch design. In addition to that, there are myriads of circuit breakers, levers, rods, and other associated controls. The SPS engine, our large rocket engine on the aft end of our Service Module, must have performed flawlessly, or we would have been stranded in lunar orbit. The parachutes up above my head must work perfectly tomorrow or we will plummet into the ocean. We have always had confidence that all this equipment will work, and work properly, and we continue to have confidence that it will do so for the remainder of the flight. All this is possible only through the blood, sweat and tears of a number of people. First, the American workmen who put these pieces of machinery together in the factory. Second, the painstaking work done by the various test teams during the assembly and the re-test after assembly. And finally, the people at the Manned Spacecraft Center, both in management, in mission planning, in flight control, and last but not least, in crew training. This operation is somewhat like the periscope of a submarine. All you see is the three of us, but beneath the surface are thousands and thousands of others, and to all those, I would like to say, thank you very much. [Long pause.]
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July 16th-24th 1969
EDT- Eastern Daylight Time
09:32am
16th
Launched from Kennedy space centre.
16:40pm
18th
96 Minute T.V Broadcast.
13:28pm
19th
Space craft entered lunar orbit.
08:50am
20th
Checked out systems.
13:11pm
Seperated LM from the CSM began descent to moon.
16:18pm
Touched down on moon.
10:50pm
Man’s fist step taken by Armstrong.
11:15pm.
Aldrin joined Armstrong on moon.
13:54pm
The Eagle lifted off from the moon.
17:35pm
Docked at CSM.
16:01pm
22nd
18 Minute Colour T.V transmission.
12:15pm
24th
Apollo 11 Module Splashed down in Mid Pacific.
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Timeline of events
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Apollo 11 The race to land the first man on the moon officially ended on July 20, 1969, when an Apollo 11 lunar landing vehicle carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the dusty surface of the Sea of Tranquility, giving the U.S. bragging rights over its bitter Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union.