The Flight of Apollo 11
Apollo 11 Mission Patch
Launched: July 16, 1969
Crew:
Backup Crew: Milestones:
Payload:
Mission Objective:
Launch: Six days before, the Apollo 11 launch vehicle and spacecraft half crawled from the VAB and trundled at 0.9 mph to Pad 39-A. A successful countdown test ending on July 3 showed the readiness of machines, systems, and people. The next launch window (established by lighting conditions at the landing site on Mare Tranquillitatis) opened at 9:32 AM EDT on July 16, 1969. The crew for Apollo 11, all of whom had already flown in space during Gemini, had been intensively training as a team for many months.
Orbit:
Landing:
Mission Highlights: First step on moon, 10:56:15 p.m. EDT; end of EVA, 111:39:13 MET (01:09 a.m. EDT); liftoff from moon, 124:22:00.8 MET (1:54 p.m. EDT); LM-CSM docking, 128:03:00 MET; transearth injection, 135:23:52.3 MET. First lunar landing mission and lunar surface EVA. July 20, Sea of Tranquility. 1 EVA of 02 hours, 31 minutes. Flag and instruments deployed; unveiled plaque on the LM descent stage with inscription: "Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind." Lunar surface stay time 21.6 hours;59.5 hours in lunar orbit, with 30 orbits. LM ascent stage left in lunar orbit. 20kg (44 lbs) of material gathered.
Landing Transcript: After eight years of all-out effort, more than $20 billion expended, and three astronauts' deaths in the Apollo 1 capsule fire, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. The two astronauts who set foot on the surface, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, called it in what later astronauts thought of as an understatement, "magnificent desolation." Here is the radio transmissions of the landing and Armstrong's first venture out onto the Lunar surface. The "CC" in the transcript is Houston Mission Control, CDR is Neil Armstrong, and LMP is Buzz Aldrin.
Summary: On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a man first set foot on another celestial body. Six hours after landing at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (with less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining), Neil A. Armstrong took the "Small Step" into our greater future when he stepped off the Lunar Module, named "Eagle," onto the surface of the moon, from which he could look up and see the earth in the heavens as no one had done before him. He was shortly joined by "Buzz" Aldrin, and the two astronauts spent 21 hours on the lunar surface and returned 46 pounds of lunar rocks. Their liftoff from the surface of the moon was (partially) captured on a TV camera they left behind, and they successfully docked with Michael Collins, patiently orbiting the cold but no longer lifeless moon alone in the Command Module "Columbia."
For Further Reading: Benson, Charles D. and Faherty, William Barnaby. Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4204, 1978. Bilstein, Roger E. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4206, 1980. Murray, Charles Murray and Cox, Catherine Bly. Apollo: The Race to the Moon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. Brooks, Courtney G., Grimwood, James M., and Swenson, Loyd S., Jr. Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4205, 1979). Chaiken, Andrew. A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York: Viking, 1994. Compton, W. David. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4214, 1989). Launius, Roger D., and Hunley, J.D. Compilers. An Annotated Bibliography of the Apollo Program. Washington, DC: Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 2, 1994. Launius, Roger D. Apollo: A Retrospective Analysis. Washington, DC: Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 3, 1994. Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4102, 1982. Logsdon, John M. The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970. Logsdon, John M. General Editor. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4407, 1995, 3 vols. Shepard, Alan, and Slayton, Deke. Moonshot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon. New York: Turner Books, 1994. |