1969 Moon Landings
On July 20, 1969, American
astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-)
became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours
later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took
his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years
after President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) announced a national goal of landing
a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon
mission, took place in 1972.
The Apollo Program
The American effort to send
astronauts to the moon had its origins in an 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 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. That
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.
Timeline of the 1969 Moon Landing
At 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, with
the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with
astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins (1930-) aboard.
Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the
mission.
After traveling 240,000 miles in
76 hours, Apollo 11 entered 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 4:17 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 now-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 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., as Armstrong
stepped off the ladder and planted his foot on the moon’s powdery surface, he
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."
Aldrin joined him on the moon's
surface 19 minutes later, and together they took photographs of the terrain,
planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests and spoke with President
Richard Nixon (1913-94) 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
12:50 p.m. on July 24.
Celebrations:
An estimated one million
spectators watched the launch of Apollo 11 from the highways and beaches in the
vicinity of the launch site. Dignitaries included the Chief of Staff of the
United States Army, General William Westmoreland, four cabinet members, 19
state governors, 40 mayors, 60 ambassadors and 200 congressmen. Vice President
Spiro Agnew viewed the launch with the former president, Lyndon B. Johnson and
his wife Lady Bird Johnson. Around 3,500 media representatives were present. About two-thirds were from the United States;
the rest came from 55 other countries. The launch was televised live in 33
countries, with an estimated 25 million viewers in the United States alone.
Millions more around the world (estimated at 600 million) listened to radio broadcasts. President Richard Nixon viewed the launch from
his office in the White House with his NASA liaison officer, Apollo astronaut
Frank Borman.
On August 13, the three
astronauts rode in ticker-tape parades in their honor in New York and Chicago,
with an estimated six million attendees. On the same evening in Los Angeles there was
an official state dinner to celebrate the flight, attended by members of
Congress, 44 governors, the Chief Justice of the United States, and ambassadors
from 83 nations at the Century Plaza Hotel. Nixon and Agnew honored each
astronaut with a presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The three astronauts spoke before
a joint session of Congress on September 16, 1969. They presented two US flags,
one to the House of Representatives and the other to the Senate, that had been
carried to the surface of the Moon with them. The flag of American Samoa on
Apollo 11 is on display at the Jean P. Haydon Museum in Pago Pago, the capital
of American Samoa.
This celebration was the
beginning of a 38-day world tour that brought the astronauts to 22 foreign
countries and included visits with the leaders of many countries. The crew toured from September 29 to November
5. Many nations honored the first human Moon landing with special features in
magazines or by issuing Apollo 11 commemorative postage stamps or coins
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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