Apollo-11: A giant leap for mankind

July 20,1969 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.

It was a dream of human being to reach the moon and explore the surface.We fascinated what mystery might be there .People might have only dreamt about reaching the moon but there was doubt if we could really reach there and even if we reach then how. Scientists just did not dreamt it,they explored how to fulfill that dream and Apollo -11 is the result of that.

After the unsuccessful attempt by the Luna 1 to land on the moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard moon landing later that same year with the Luna-2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4. Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976. In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna-9 and Luna -13 missions. The U.S. followed with five unmanned Surveyor soft landings. 

There was a cold war between United States and Soviet union in space developments. America wanted to send astronauts in moon before Soviet Union. 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 Saturnrocket. 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.

Armstrong,Buzz and Collins 

The crew for the final mission were selected.Neil A. Armstrong was selected the commander of the mission .He was a 38 years old civilian research pilot.Michael Collins was the command module pilot and Edwin Buzz Aldrin was the Lunar module pilot for the mission.They all were medically cleared for the historic mission.There were backup crews also in case something unexpected happen.James A. Lovell as commander,William A. Andres as command module pilot and Fred W. Haise as Lunar module pilot were selected for backup crew.

Neil A. Armstrong 

On July 16,1969 at 9.32 a.m. with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins aboard. 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 4:18 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.They collected about 47 pounds of lunar material to bring back to earth. 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. 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.

After this mission 5 more missions were completed to reach moon.Those were named as Apollo 12,Apollo 14,Apollo 15,Apollo 16,Apollo 17.Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmit were the last men to land on moon in December 14,1972.

There is some confusion about whether the mission Apollo-11 truly happened or not. Many claimed the pictures of this mission to be fake but there was no strong evidence to prove this mission fake .This mission paved the way to further Space missions and space development. Researches now going on whether we can live on moon.Hope we will find it out soon.