Wednesday, July 20, 2011

On this day: 1969 - Humankind's first steps on the moon

On the morning of July 16, 1969 Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sat in the Saturn V rocket at the Kennedy Space Centre waiting to make history.

At 9:32 a.m. EDT the Saturn V rocket, with the help of its 7.5 million pounds of thrust launched the astronauts into the air. About 12 minutes after the launch the crew was in orbit of Earth.

After having orbited the Earth one and a half times, Apollo 11 got the ‘green light’ from mission controllers to head towards the moon.

Three days later the crew was in lunar orbit. The following day, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin entered the lunar module Eagle and began the descent to the moon.

When the time came to land the module on the moon, Armstrong manually piloted the contraption past an area full of boulders. During the final seconds of landing, Eagle’s computer started to sound alarms.
The reason for the alarms turned out to be due to the computer trying to do too many things at once.
The lunar module landed on the moon at 4:18 p.m. EDT with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining.

At 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong climbed down the Eagle’s ladder and onto the moon, becoming the first human to place a foot on another planet. Upon taking the step – with over half a billion people watching on television – he said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

Buzz Aldrin later joined Armstrong on the moon and they explored the surface of the moon for two and a half hours.

They left behind an American flag, a patch honoring the fallen Apollo 1 crew, and a plaque on one of Eagle's legs. It stated, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." 

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