Click each image for a larger version.

HSK MISSION DAY 5	Monday 21 July 1969
Undocking : 0546:00 AEST Only Madrid tracking
LM Lunar Landing : 0617:41 AEST Goldstone and Madrid tracking
		Track Duration
HSK Prime LM
AOS : 1112:00	LOS : 2202:00	10h 50m
Tidbinbilla Wing CSM Lunar orbits
17 AOS : 1141:08	LOS : 1252:57	1h 11m 49s
18 AOS : 1348:00	LOS : 1459:50	1h 11m 50s
19 AOS : 1537:43	LOS : 1648:50	1h 11m 07s
20 AOS : 1736:13	LOS : 1848:00	1h 11m 47s
21 AOS : 1934:30	LOS : 2046:28	1h 11m 58s
22 AOS : 2132:50	LOS : 2244:45	1h 11m 55s

THE LANDING

In Mission Control the White Shift’s flight controllers under Gene Kranz drifted into the control room. As their eyes adjusted to the dim lights, the smell of stale cigarette smoke mixed with discarded fast foods struck their nostrils. A low buzz of conversation supported the subdued feeling of urgency in the air as Glynn Lunney’s shift briefed Kranz’s team. By now every available audio outlet had a headset plugged into it. To be in the operations centre and not have access to the spacecraft communications loop to hear what was going on would be unbearable.

Kranz set himself up at the Flight Director’s console and checked out his team. Everyone was Go; the world-wide tracking network was Green. He briefed his troops and announced, “Take Mission Control to battle short.” The main power circuit breakers were locked. The doors were locked. No flight controller could enter or leave the room during this critical period.

The view through the LM’s window as they were coming in to land at Tranquillity Base. (Click for a larger version.)

If all had gone according to the flight plan behind the Moon the LM and CSM should be coming round the rim separated, the LM at an altitude of 15,000 metres ready to land in about 12 minutes. The first big event was at hand, and from now on everything was going to be happening fast.

Madrid and Goldstone had AOS but the LM’s signal was weak and dropping in and out of lock due to its antenna not being optimised. It was very difficult to speak to the astronauts over the noise on the loop.

Coming up to the “PDI (Powered Descent Initiate) Go/No Go” decision all the data dropped out. Kranz, “I delayed with the go/no go with the team for roughly about forty seconds and made the decision to press on.” In the roll call only the Guidance Officer Steve Bales came on line with a doubtful call, “Flight, we’re out on our radial velocity; we’re half way to our abort limits.”

Kranz tensed when he heard the radial velocity was half way to abort limits and found it meant the spacecraft was moving a bit faster than planned. The reason was the astronauts had not fully decompressed the tunnel between the two spacecraft – it should have been a vacuum – so when they separated the slight pressure remaining pushed the spacecraft apart with more velocity than planned. As the error remained constant the problem was accommodated, but still meant they were going to land further downrange than planned, in what was expected to be a more rocky area.

Then an electrical problem appeared, a bad meter reading the AC power had the controllers worried as the AC system powered the gyro’s landing radar. The decreasing height of the LM above the lunar surface was critical now. Their height measured by our ranging systems on the Earth could be anything up to 2,500 metres out at lunar distances and angles, so the height measured by the on board radar was needed at Houston for evaluation and comparison. Kranz was having to grapple with an increasing number of problems rearing up as the LM dropped to the lunar surface, “All through this time my mind is really running. Is there enough data to keep going.”

Just when they wanted to tell the LM they were GO for powered descent through Capcom Charlie Duke, they momentarily lost contact with the LM and had to relay the message via Mike Collins in Columbia.

Duke: “Eagle, Houston. You are GO. Take it all at 4 minutes. You are GO to continue powered descent.”
Armstrong nodded his head: “Roger.”

 

By now all the flight controllers were pumped up, stretched to the limit, trying to evaluate their ratty data and make decisions on whether their GO was the right decision. With a slight spacecraft attitude change contact with Eagle improved enough for Kranz to hear the astronaut’s final checklist before firing the descent engine. “Engine start….10 per cent thrust” called the LM.

Altitude 12,200 metres.

Aldrin took his eyes off the instrument panel for a moment to look through the window........... “And we got the Earth straight out our front window.”

The LM headed down for the moon’s surface, the astronauts looking up at the Earth through the windows, unable to see the moon beneath them. At all times they were very conscious of their home, the Earth a blue and white jewel glittering in the black void of space hanging suspended up there in the lunar sky. The land they were heading for had no water or food or shelter, and the nearest friendly mechanic or technician and their spare parts were three days and over 321,860 kilometres away across the void. No place to get stuck.

The LM was now racing horizontally across the lunar landscape at 5,790 kilometres per hour and had to slow up in stages, to the speed of a jet plane, 965 kilometres per hour, down to the speed of a car at 100 kilometres per hour at an altitude of 2,133 metres, finally hovering above the surface, before dropping vertically into the dust. Armstrong and Aldrin had to make the first ever landing on the moon in one go – there was no way of pulling out for a second attempt.

Altitude 10,200 metres.

Then, quite unexpectedly, a yellow caution light winked at the astronauts from the computer control panel. It was identified as a 1202 alarm. It meant the computer was overloaded and couldn’t do all the tasks in the time available.

Armstrong warned the flight controllers at Houston: “Program alarm.”
Duke: “It’s looking good to us, over.”
Armstrong: “It’s a 1202.”

Capcom Charlie Duke said of that moment, “When I heard Neil say 1202 for the first time, I tell you my heart hit the floor. I looked across at Steve Bales but he was busy at his console and came back with the answer almost straight away we were go.”

Jack Garman, a young back-room expert supporting Bales from another console, remembered a similar problem had been tried out in a simulation only a week or so before, quickly reassured Bales: “It’s executive overflow; if it does not occur again, we’re fine.”

26 year old Steve Bales recalled that fateful moment:

“I had just started to relax a little bit, if you can call it relaxing, and I heard the program alarm, and quite frankly, Jack, who had these things memorised said, ‘that’s okay’, before I could even remember which group it was in.... I was frantically trying to look down... by the time I looked at the group and saw which one the alarm was in, Jack said it’s okay, I remembered yeah, that’s one of those we said its okay, I looked up, the rest of the computer looked good, so I said ‘Lets go!’ It took us a long time. In the Control Center any more than three seconds on descent is too long.... and it took us about ten to fifteen seconds.”

One of the alarms was a DP00 which meant the LM’s computer would halt and wait for further instructions – at this stage of the landing an abort situation. The flight control team was now working on a number of complex situations with the potential to create an abort situation but nobody was calling for an abort.

 

With four minutes to go to the landing the signal from the spacecraft strengthened and settled down so from this point on communications with the LM were solid.

Swiftly dropping down to the moon’s surface the astronauts sweated out a thirty second pause while at Mission Control Kranz snapped out a final tense roll call around his flight controllers. Steve Bales’ decision alone decided the fate of the mission, to abort and terminate the mission then and there, or continue on to success or... the possibility of a disaster. As it turned out it was the right decision, and Bales later collected his Medal of Freedom from the President along with the astronauts.

In the middle of the 1202 crisis, Chuck Deiterich in Retro chopped in:

“Flight, Retro.”
Kranz: “Go Retro.”
Deiterich: “Throttle down 6 plus 25.”
Kranz to Duke: “Six plus twenty five.”

Retro was advising Kranz to pass on to Duke that 6 minutes 25 seconds into the burn the crew should expect the engine to throttle down to 55 per cent power.

Duke: “Roger. We got you. We’re go on that alarm.....six plus 25 throttle down.”
Armstrong: “Throttle down on time.”
Aldrin: “Throttle down on time! You can feel it here when it throttles down. Better than the simulator.”
Duke: “You’re looking great at 8 minutes.”

Altitude 2,800 metres.

Now the LM began to drop its legs to point down to the moon’s surface, and the astronauts could see the moon’s surface in the bottom of their windows.

 

Armstrong was trained to land the LM. The two pilots had to work together as a cohesive team, Armstrong controlling the spacecraft’s flight while looking out of the window at the landing site; Aldrin concentrating on the display panel and calling out the information he needed. Armstrong had to translate what he saw with what he heard with what he felt to the spacecraft controls to guide the Eagle safely down to the lunar surface.

Armstrong: “Okay. 5000 (feet). 100 feet per second is good. Going to check my attitude control. Attitude control is good.” (The 100 feet per second is the descent rate.)
Duke: “Roger. Copy. Eagle, Houston. You’re GO for landing. Over.”
Armstrong: “Okay. 3000 at 70.”

At 610 metres above the lunar surface another alarm winked from the computer, “1201,” said Aldrin with growing concern. With no time for explanations from Houston, they had to trust their lives to the judgment of the flight controllers.

Armstrong: “1201! Okay, 2000 at 50.”
Duke: “Roger, 1201.”

In Mission Control Kranz queried Bales again: “1201 alarm?”
Bales had already been onto Garman: “Same type, we’re GO, Flight.”

Kranz to Duke: “Okay, we’re GO.”
Duke: “1201 alarm. We’re GO. Same type. We’re GO.”
Aldrin: “2000 feet. 2000 feet”
Duke: “Eagle looking great. You’re GO............ Roger 1202. We copy it.”

Armstrong was riveted to his controls:

“Now we get to that final landing phase and this is altitude versus range to the landing site. This is about the last of a mile into the touch down spot from a thousand feet (305 metres). This part is normally flown automatically and as you get down to 500 feet (152 metres) you have some options as to what you can do to complete the landing. One is to just leave the thing run automatically. Then there’s several manual options that you can choose from. One is manual attitude control but with an automatic throttle that will control the descent rate to the programmed value that it thinks it should have. One is manual attitude control with a rate of descent mode on the throttle so that you can actually command your descent rate and it’ll freeze. Say you’re coming in at 17 feet (5 metres) per second, it’ll hold 17 feet per second down until you put a blip on the switch and each blip changes your rate of descent mode by one foot (0.3 metre) per second. I really didn’t think that was likely to work, but it did. Matter of fact, it was quite smooth.

The final method that you have is manual attitude and manual throttle. Just hand on throttle like most of our rudimentary VTOL (Vertical Take Off Landing) aircraft and like you would fly a helicopter. Now, you could fly auto, but its not likely that many test pilots would do that. One reason is that the auto system doesn’t know how to pick a good area and can’t change its mind. The second is that when you get right down to the final phases and it turns out there is a little residual velocity of a couple of feet per second sideways you’d have a bad case of stubbing your toe on touch down. For those reasons, I didn’t intend to make an automatic landing; it was my intention to fly the manual mode with this one foot per second incremental rate of descent mode on the throttle into touchdown, which is what I did.

But as we got to the point where you’d normally take over manually, I had been looking out the window and, if you had been listening at the time, all we really saw was a gigantic crater and lots of very big rocks a very unfavourable position to land. Now it looked like we might be able to land short and I was really tempted for a minute because I knew the scientists would have a ball if we could land in the middle of that boulder patch. They would think it was just Jim Dandy if we could run up on the rim and take pictures down the sides of this really big crater and be overjoyed; and I thought about that for a little bit and I didn’t do it. It’s an old rule, when in doubt, land long, and I did. We extended the range down about 1,100 feet (335 metres) past where it would have gone if we had let it go automatically.

I didn’t have any of those 30 storey rocks that Tom (Stafford from Apollo 10) looked at, but I thought that this area with all those automobile sized rocks wasn’t probably a good place for me to try and join them. Well, I thought this was a good spot and then I got closer and decided it wasn’t so I changed the descent rate and changed the attitude and went on a little bit further and thought this was a good spot, and when I got closer, I was dissatisfied and was just absolutely adamant about my God given right to be wishywashy about where I was going to land.”

Back in the Mission Control Center in Houston the flight controllers were quiet, there was little they could do now, but they were getting jittery why wasn’t Armstrong landing? He should have landed by now he always had in the simulations. There were no clues coming down the voice channel just figures from Aldrin. They were all staring at their consoles, helpless, not one of them knew why the Eagle was still weaving about above the surface, but all were acutely aware that time and fuel were fast running out.

At a height of 76 metres Aldrin flicked a glance out of his window and had a fleeting impression of the LM’s shadow on the lunar surface ringed with a halo of bright sunlight before a red warning light came on only 5 per cent fuel remained and they still weren’t down. There were only 94 seconds left to land.

Kranz remembers, “That really grabbed my attention, mainly because during the process of training runs we had generally landed by this time. Now it was a question of continuing the countdown. It was a horse race between running out of fuel or getting down on the surface.”

At an altitude of 15 metres they entered what was referred to as the deadman zone. In this zone, if anything had gone wrong if for example, the engine had failed it would probably have been too late to do anything about it before they crashed on the moon. There were no fail-safe abort systems available until after the landing.


From out of the black sky above the pastewhite lunar surface bathed in the contrasty early morning sunlight, the LM appeared with a stream of exhaust gases blasting down at the surface. Like a prehistoric predator, its two windows like beady eyes above the four dangling legs, the LM now hovered 9 metres above the surface, instruments and astronauts desperately searching, trying to probe the lunar dust for a clear spot to land. Armstrong could see small boulders and rocks sticking up out of the blanket of dust blasting away from their rocket motor. A hard white surface appeared through the dust, followed by black shadows of the approaching legs and spindly probes.

Deke Slayton was desperate to hear what Buzz Aldrin was saying and felt Duke was talking too much so clipped him on the arm and said, “Shut up,” and concentrated on his earphones where Aldrin was reciting displays and events displayed on the console in front of him:

“..six...forward..... …..lights on .... down two and a half..... forty feet..... down two and a half,........ kicking up some dust.... thirty feet ...... two and a half down..... faint shadow...... four forward...... four forward..... drifting to the right a little...... Okay.....”

Aldrin: “4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet, down a half.”

Duke had to break in, “Thirty seconds....” to advise the crew how much fuel they had left.

Kranz: “We escalated another notch when we got the 30 second call. The next thing we would start doing would be to call down every second from 15 seconds on down the line. No matter what happened, I was not going to call an abort .....”

Everyone was waiting for the 15 second call. Back room guru Bob Nance was monitoring Armstrong’s throttle control positions and was frantically mentally calculating his fuel usage to the amount of fuel remaining.

Armstrong:

“Well, they called 60 seconds from the ground, and they called 30 seconds, and I heard that, and the next thing I was supposed to see was the contact light but I never did see that that blue light. They tell me it did come on and Buzz saw it and he called it, but I never saw it. I was all eyeballs out the window at that point.

You know we had some problem with dust the exhaust kicking up dust and it obscured the surface and made it a little difficult because it was flying off parallel to the ground at a very shallow angle and at very high speed, like ground fog. You could see through it, you could see craters and rocks through it and if you had been expecting it, and I should have been, we probably would have neglected it. I’m sure the next crews won’t have that kind of problem. In fact, it did confuse us a little bit. Although it didn’t affect the altitude determination very much, I did have trouble figuring out what my cross range and down range velocities were and I didn’t want to stub my toe on touch down.

We were supposed to take over about 3:30 in the count down and get a low level light, which occurs when you have about 5% of fuel remaining and touch down right about the same time. Well, we took over just a little bit late and got the low level light on time I saw that. That gives you about 94 seconds of flying time left at that point. You have to save the last 20 seconds for an abort. We’re flying in a dead man’s curve down here close to the ground. If the descent engine quits, the ascent engine is unable to be ignited to go through its ignition sequence and get you back on a safe abort before you hit the surface. So, we were, of course, saving those last 20 seconds so that if we did need to abort we could ‘hang the chilli to it’ as they say in Texas, and get out of there while we still had the big powerful descent engine. Then when we ran out of fuel, we could stage, and have plenty of time to get going with the smaller 3,500 lb thrust ascent engine.

Now I deviated from the plan here a little bit. Our idea was that we were going to get to 5 feet (1.5 metres) and let those probes the ones sticking out the bottom of the Lunar Module’s legs touch the ground. They light a blue light in the panel. Then I was going to go about another second which would get me down to about 3 feet, say I was coming down about 2 feet per second, and then I’d punch the stop button. Now its been against my grain to shut off the engine when I was in the air, but it was supposedly an important thing to do because it would prevent the engine from blowing up as it got very close to the surface, or it would avoid overheating of the bottom of the Lunar Module.

Also if we hit hard enough, we would collapse those struts so that the stairsteps on the front would be close enough to the surface so we could get comfortably down.

Well, I forgot all that when I got down and actually touched down at a very low velocity very much like what you’d be used to in a normal helicopter landing. Turned out the thermal effects weren’t so bad and the engine didn’t have any problem and it was a long way from the top stair down to the surface, but we were able to make that 3 feet (1 metre) or so.”

In a maelstrom of dust, shadows, legs, and spent gases, the spaceship Eagle from Earth gently touched down on the lunar surface at 102h 45m 39s GET, 1517:41 USCDT on 20 July (0617:41 AEST 21 July, 1969.)

Aldrin: “Contact light!”
Armstrong: “Shutdown.”
Aldrin: “Okay. Engine stop.”

Aldrin: “At ten seconds we touched down on the lunar surface. The landing was so smooth I had to check the landing lights from the touchdown sensors to make sure the slight bump I felt was indeed the landing. It was.”

Duke: “We copy you down, Eagle.”

The billowing dust just dropped and all was still. Suddenly all the gut-wrenching, urgent decisions were gone – just silence. They had landed safely with a 4.5 degree tilt from vertical and a 13 degree yaw left from the flight path. With no atmosphere there were no familiar sounds from outside, no rustling leaves, no bird calls or human or animal noises, just the sound of their own breathing inside their helmets. The Eagle was safe on the lunar surface in an area ringed on one side by fairly good-sized craters, and on the other side by a boulder field, about the size of a house lot.

The first human voices on the moon crackled over the intercom and were relayed to the 600 million Earthlings holding their breath. As they all heard the first words from another world in English with an American accent, it seemed that for the first time in history the human inhabitants of the Planet Earth were globally united. Armstrong and Aldrin looked at each other through their visors, reached across and vigorously shook gloved hands, excited by the tension of the events on the way down, before Aldrin responded automatically to their training procedures and began to prepare for an emergency launch when he heard Armstrong announce:

“Engine arm is off...... Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed!”
Duke: “Roger, Tranquillity. We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
Aldrin: “Thank you.”
Duke: “You’re looking good here.”
Armstrong: “Okay. Let’s get on with it. Okay, we’re going to be busy for a minute.”

Charlie Duke gratefully sank back into his chair, took a deep breath, and exchanged grins with Deke Slayton. He could hardly believe it had happened.

“Okay everybody – T1, stand by for T1.” Kranz rasped out to the flight controllers while Duke was still saying, “We copy you on the ground”, but then for a moment he was speechless. The 35 year old crew-cut Kranz, who had the flight control team and himself under rigid control all the way down, admitted,

“On the consoles for the TV tubes they’ve got two handles and I found myself with my left hand holding onto that handle like the console was going to run away and I kept scribing my notes and the paper kept rolling up on me because I’d be embedding notes that I was taking during descent, and when we finally got down on the surface the viewing room... there were no people in there during training... they started cheering... that’s when I finally found, my God, we’d landed!

When the viewing room erupted, I sorta froze and was speechless and just rapped my arm on the console and broke my pencil and bruised myself from my palm all the way up to my elbow.”

The sudden pain was enough for him to regain control and coolly announce, “All right, everybody settle down, and let’s get ready for a T+1 STAY/NO STAY.”

Duke: “Roger, Eagle, and you are Stay for T1. Over. Eagle you are Stay for T1.”
Armstrong: “Roger, understand Stay for T1.”

Gene Kranz (centre) discussing a point during the Apollo 11 mission.

 

T+1 was one minute after landing – decision time for staying or launching in a hurry if there was danger to the astronauts or spacecraft. There were only three minute or twelve minute abort points – after twelve minutes they would have to wait for Collins in Columbia to go around the Moon again.

Just after Eagle had landed there was a moment of anxiety when engineers in Mission Control noticed the pressure rising dramatically in one of the descent engine fuel lines. The residual heat from the shut down engine was creeping up to a slug of frozen fuel left in the pipe, with the consequence it might become unstable and explode like a small hand grenade and cause damage to the ascent stage. Just when the engineers were about to hit the urgent action button the pressure began dropping and the tension was over. Kranz, “We used a cryogenic bottle to pressurise our descent engine and we are wondering if this thing is going to explode.” Armstrong and Aldrin, however, did not consider it a serious problem.

While Armstrong and Aldrin were in constant communication with Mission Control, Collins in the Command Module was spinning around the moon, relying on somebody relaying the events to tell him what was happening. After forty minutes of complete isolation behind the moon on each orbit, he could talk and listen to the Earth for seventy minutes through Goldstone and our Wing at Tidbinbilla, but he only had about eight minutes in touch with Eagle each time he passed over Tranquillity Base. Then it was back to another forty minutes of isolation. He happened to be in the contact zone when they landed, so heard the verbal exchanges of the landing.

Duke: “Rog. Columbia this is Houston. Say something they ought to be able to hear you. Over.”
Collins: “Roger, Tranquillity Base. It sure sounded great from up here. You guys did a fantastic job.”
Armstrong: “Thank you. Just keep that orbiting base ready for us up there now.”
Collins: “Will do.”

WHERE HAD THEY LANDED?

But where had they landed? Nobody was sure. It wasn’t that easy – the mapping people were sweating now. Collins in Columbia was vainly scanning the lunarscape for signs of the LM each time he passed over, guided by Houston’s latest update from the Mapping Sciences Laboratory in Houston. Using huge lunar maps and data from the spacecraft and tracking stations they narrowed it down to an 8 kilometres radius. Armstrong and Aldrin could not identify anything of significance from their position. It wasn’t until they were half way home that their position was pinpointed by a chance remark by Armstrong.

ARMSTRONG DECIDES ON AN EARLY EVA.

The flight plan called for a four hour rest period after landing. As everything had gone according to schedule, the LM was in good shape, and the astronauts weren’t admitting to being tired, they were very keen to get out before their rest period.

Armstrong: “We wanted to do the EVA (lunar walk) as soon as possible. It would make more sense to go ahead and complete the EVA while we were still awake and not try to put that activity in the middle of a sleep period.”

Armstrong: “Our recommendation at this point is planning an EVA, with your concurrence, starting about 8 o’clock this evening, Houston time. That is about three hours from now.”
Duke; “Stand by.”
Armstrong: “Well, we will give you some time to think about it.”
Duke: “Tranquillity Base, Houston. We thought about it. We will support it. We’re go at that time. Over.”
Armstrong: “Roger.”

MISSION CONTROL, PARKES AND HONEYSUCKLE CREEK GET READY FOR THE FIRST LUNAR EVA.

As I was on the night shift it was my job to get the equipment ready for Frank Campbell to support the day’s momentous events. Goldstone would be tracking two-way with the LM on the Moon’s surface when it came over the hill. We began our Site Readiness Tests (SRT) checks at 0600 AEST and by 1042 Honeysuckle Creek was ready for the day’s events and went into the H-30 count, ready for an 1112 acquisition.

Outside it was a freezing winter’s day with sleet showers driving in from the west as the 26 metre antenna dropped down to the horizon and patiently waited. Inside the building the atmosphere thickened with tension as the day shift geared up for the first signs of a signal.

 

Honeysuckle Creek, Monday 21 July 1969. Hamish Lindsay, who took this photo, writes – “This picture was taken of the HSK antenna tracking the Apollo 11 Lunar Module just before Armstrong took his first step onto the lunar surface. Tom Reid, the Station Director, sent me out to record the moment. It was a wet and cold mid-winter morning – we were suffering sleet showers at the time, which you can see on the hills behind.” Click the image for a larger version.

At 1112 AEST the Moon rose above the gum-tree clad mountains to the east beside Deadman’s Hill and the receivers promptly locked onto a strong signal from the lunar surface. Anxious eyes scanned all the readouts and reported good figures to the Ops Console.

The operations areas were cleared for action as the astronauts prepared for the EVA. In contrast to Houston, there were no fast foods available in the Australian bush to be left about. There was 1 hour and 41 minutes to Armstrong putting his boot on the lunar surface. Over in the Wing at Tidbinbilla they had just begun tracking Michael Collins in the CSM on his 17th Orbit.

The boresight television camera shows Honeysuckle Creek’s antenna is pointed straight at Tranquility Base. From a Super 8 movie by Ed von Renouard, Monday 21 July 1969. Scan: David Woods.

Nearly an hour after Honeysuckle had acquired the signal, away over the paddocks, 250 kilometres to the north north west as the crow flies from Canberra, the CSIRO’s famous 64 metre dish at Parkes was wound down to its limits, waiting for the Moon to rise. The Director, John Bolton and Neil Mason were at the controls, and about 20 other operators were gathered in the control room and tea room below, listening to the astronauts, trying to figure out when they were going to open the hatch and would the Moon be in their main feed when they did. It looked as though it was going to be a race.

To add to their anxiety, powerful gusts of wind stirring thick dust clouds could be seen to the south, racing towards their vulnerable antenna. Unable to do anything at this late stage they winced as 112 kilometre an hour gusts (ten times over the specified safety limit) attacked the big dish, slamming it against the zenith angle drive pinions. Luckily the winds eased before Armstrong climbed out and Parkes was able to provide one of history’s greatest telecasts, despite the winds continuing to batter the antenna beyond its safety limits.

Using a less sensitive ‘off-axis’ detector, Parkes was able to receive the television pictures just as the LM’s camera was switched on, but because they would have a lower quality picture and could expect a break in their data switching to the main feed, were not selected to be broadcast to the networks until the LM’s signal reached the main beam.

 

In Mission Control there were two teams of controllers, one led by Clifford Charlesworth to run the EVA, and one led by Milton Windler to run the sleep period. These two teams now had to stand by while the EVA decision was under way. Charlesworth, nicknamed ‘the Mississippi Gambler’ by his peers because of his apparent laid back attitude, won the next shift when the decision to go for a walk first came down the line. He took over from Kranz, and settled in with his controllers to support the EVA. A poll confirmed everyone was GO.

Mission Control was ready.

John Saxon, Operations Supervisor at Honeysuckle:

“The checks on the portable life support systems at this point were in a totally different sequence to what we were expecting every time they changed modes we had to make major reconfigurations on the ground we were really, really busy trying to keep up with the astronauts doing their own thing.

The busiest man without question, was Kevin Gallegos, the man at the front end at the Sub Carrier Demodulation equipment because all these modes affected how he routed the signals through the station and he had to literally second guess what the astronauts were doing, because they were not following the planned sequence. He was calling out all the things he was seeing, we were then directing the telemetry people who were actually processing the support data such as the astronauts heart beats, trying to report to Houston what was happening all the time, telling them what we were doing, and keeping a log of all the events. It was a real team effort.”

Kevin Gallegos, who was working on the Data Demodulators (SDDS) using an oscilloscope to watch the images (in phosphor green) remembered:

“I broke out in a cold sweat because they were saying things should be happening, the Saxons of the world were saying it had happened, the telemetry bloke was looking around saying ‘where is it?’ and I looked up and found to my horror that I wasn’t patched right. It was one of those things you have gone over that many times in your head I just looked at it in utter disbelief so I quickly whipped it around, and in the euphoria of the moment everything took off. There’s ten seconds of my life there where I can still feel that cold sweat thirty five years later!”

Kevin Gallegos at SDDS (the Signal Data Demodulation System) on Monday July 21, 1969. From a Super 8 movie by Ed von Renouard. Scan: David Woods

On the Moon Armstrong and Aldrin were slowly hurrying into their EVA suits in the cramped space of the LM’s cabin, surrounded by vulnerable switches and instrument panels. Every move had to be meticulously carried out and checked. A lot of the drill took longer than planned because they never had a chance to simulate all of it under the right conditions – such as clearing away the remnants of their last meal. Armstrong took a look out the window to see the conditions outside and commented,

“I still find that the area around the ladder is in a complete dark shadow, so we’re going to have some problem with the TV… but I am sure you will see – you’ll get a picture from the lighted part.”

By the time Honeysuckle Creek had locked on to the LM’s signal the astronauts were nearly ready to open the hatch.

At 1139 AEST, 27 minutes after we had acquired the LM’s signal, Aldrin reached for the handle to open the hatch.

Armstrong: “Everything is go here. We’re just waiting for the cabin pressure to bleed, to below enough pressure to open the hatch.”
Houston: “Roger, we’re showing a real low static pressure on your cabin. Do you think you can open the hatch at this pressure?”
Armstrong: “We’re going to try it....”

The hatch stayed stubbornly shut as there was still some pressure in the LM’s cabin. Aldrin tried peeling a corner of the hatch seal back and that released the pressure to allow the hatch to open.

“The hatch is coming open,” said Armstrong as he watched a little flurry of ice particles burst through the widening slot. With the hatch open he eased himself though the opening, careful to guide the bulky EMU and its antennas through the hatch without snagging anything.

Aldrin reminded him to open the MESA (Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly) door to expose the television camera, but had forgotten to turn the camera on:

Aldrin: “Did you get the MESA out?”
Armstrong reached out to yank the D ring and lanyard: “I’m going to pull it now, ................. Houston, the MESA came down all right.”
McCandless: “This is Houston. Roger, we copy. We’re standing by for your TV.”
Armstrong: “Houston, this is Neil. Radio check?”

A mockup of the MESA with the camera mounted upside down. Click for a larger image.

 

Armstrong was now outside the LM. As he was a communication relay station for Aldrin still inside, both astronauts were following their checklists which called for confirmation they had radio contact through the external EVA antenna. Houston also reminded Aldrin to turn the TV Camera on.

McCandless: “Neil, this is Houston. You’re loud and clear. Break. Break. Buzz, this is Houston. Radio check and verify TV circuit breaker in.”
Aldrin: “Roger. TV circuit breakers in and read you loud and clear.”

McCandless: “Roger............. and we’re getting a picture on the TV.”
Aldrin: “You got a good picture, huh?”
McCandless: “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.”

At Honeysuckle, television technician Ed von Renouard was watching his screen intently for the first signs of a picture. He heard Aldrin say the circuit breaker was in and suddenly, at 1254 AEST, an image appeared. There was a flurry of energetic activity as the television operators tried to decipher the strange fuzzy shapes on their screens. This was the conversation on the interstation communication channel as the operators stared at the historic images on the screens before them.

Goldstone: “TV on line, Goldstone TV on line.”
Honeysuckle: “Honeysuckle video on line.”
Houston TV: “Houston TV, we have both sites five by.”
Houston TV: “Goldstone, can you confirm that your reverse switch is in the proper position for the camera being upside down?”
Goldstone: “Stand by, we will go to reverse position. We are in reverse.”
Houston TV: “Roger, thank you. All stations, we have just switched video to Honeysuckle.”

The first television frames used were being sent by the big 64 metre Mars antenna at the Goldstone Tracking Station in California, but they were in trouble as Bill Wood, USB Lead Engineer at Goldstone explains:

“I saw the network TV here – we were picking up the commercial television out of Los Angeles and when we saw the switch from Goldstone to Honeysuckle there was a pronounced improvement in the video quality. ‘Hey, look at the picture from Honeysuckle!’ and I thought ‘Good Lord there’s something wrong with our system – they are getting it much better than we are.’”

(See the ‘Parkes and Honeysuckle’ page in the Apollo 11 TV section for details.)

Ed von Renouard, the television technician at Honeysuckle Creek:

“When I was sitting there in front of the scan converter, waiting for a pattern on the input monitor, I was hardly aware of the rest of the world.

I heard Buzz Aldrin say ‘TV circuit breaker in’ and at the same moment I saw the sloping strut of the Lunar Module’s leg against the moon’s surface.

The input monitor receiving the slow scan from the spacecraft showed the scene upside down, but this was expected and planned for, and our signal went to Sydney right way up. A few weeks before the mission someone at NASA discovered that when the MESA hatch with the TV camera attached was opened the camera would be upside down, so a simple switch was installed at the tracking stations to invert the picture.”

McCandless: “Okay, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.”

THAT FIRST STEP ON THE MOON’S SURFACE

With troubles at Goldstone and Parkes yet to receive a main beam signal, Houston video switched to the Honeysuckle Creek video signal being sent to them by Sydney Video, though they left the sound from Goldstone, and viewers around the world were able to make out the ghostly looking scene of the black sky and white lunar surface with Armstrong’s legs carefully seeking each rung of the LM’s ladder.

Neil Armstrong descends the ladder. GET 109:22:40 (Photo taken from the video console at Honeysuckle Creek. Click for a larger image.)

 

This recently-discovered video recording of the feed from Honeysuckle Creek to Sydney Video switching centre shows the TV start just as Bruce McCandless calls, “We’re getting a picture on the TV!” It’s a 20MB MPEG4 video file – click on the picture to open the file in a new window, or right click to download.

Unaware of the television picture dramas on Earth, Armstrong worked his way to the bottom of the ladder and looked down. The impact of landing should have compressed the LM’s legs and only given him a reasonable step down but his landing had been so gentle he still had a metre to jump down from the bottom rung. He jumped for the LM’s dish-shaped footpad and to check he could still get back on the ladder immediately jumped back up. With the Moon’s gravity it was no problem, so Armstrong returned to the footpad and looked down at the surface.

“I’m at the foot of the ladder.

The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about two inches (5 centimetres), although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained as you get close to it; It’s almost like a powder. The ground mass is very fine…

Okay I’m going to step off the LM now.”

Neil Armstrong on the footpad, about to step onto the surface. GET 109:24:39 (Photo taken from the video console at Honeysuckle Creek.) Click here for more TV images from HSK.

Carefully he raised his left boot and planted it onto the soil, checking it would take his weight.

At 2156:20 USCDT, July 20 (1256:20 AEST July 21 1969) 38 year old Neil Alden Armstrong from Wapakoneta, Ohio, USA, stepped onto the lunar surface and spoke those immortal words:

“That’s one small step for man…. one giant leap for mankind.”

A breathless world (except Russia), glued to every television and radio set available on the planet, was mesmerised by the moment. Buzz Aldrin was watching through the hatch. Still holding on to the LM, Armstrong dragged his boot across the soil, making furrows. The dusty lunar soil clung to his boot like a fine black powder. Now confident, he let go of the LM and tried walking around. He felt quite buoyant, his 158 kilogram weight with the spacesuit on Earth now only 26 kilograms.

Armstrong: “The surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe one eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.”
McCandless: “Neil, this is Houston, we’re copying.”

Then after a pause, Armstrong: “There seems to be no difficulty in moving around, as we suspected. Its even perhaps easier than the simulations of one sixth g that we performed in the various simulations on the ground. It’s absolutely no trouble to walk around.”

The monitor on the scan converter at Honeysuckle shows Armstrong using the LEC (Lunar Equipment Conveyor) to bring supplies to the surface. Adrin was still inside the LM at this point. (This is the monitor directly in front of Ed von Renouard in the photo below.) From a Super 8 movie by Ed von Renouard. Scan: David Woods.

At this point Columbia was out of sight behind the moon. Collins had been trying to locate the LM from orbit (he never did), but he desperately wanted to hear what Armstrong was going to say when he stepped on the moon and he realised he was the only person out of contact with the epoch making events. All the billions of people around Earth and the two on the other side of the moon, and he was the only person completely cut off from it all! Complete silence except for the spacecraft noises. Columbia did not reappear until Armstrong and Aldrin were raising the flag, so Collins missed hearing Armstrong’s momentous step onto the lunar surface.

After Armstrong prepared deploying the camera equipment:

“Looking up at the LM, I’m standing directly in the shadow now looking up at Buzz in the window. I can see everything quite clearly. The light is sufficiently bright, backlighted into the front of the LM, that everything is clearly visible.”

After some discussion on cameras Armstrong said,

“I’ll step out and take some of my first pictures here.”

McCandless: “Rog, Neil, we’re reading you loud and clear. We see you getting some pictures and the contingency sample.”

After taking the first photographs, Armstrong moved into the sunlight and began collecting the first contingency soil samples. He found the surface was soft on top but he ran into a hard layer of very cohesive material 17 centimetres underneath.

Bryan Sullivan, Technical Officer in the computer area remembers:

“I arrived on shift, sat down at the computer console with the rest of the team, and pulled on my headset. The previous shift were still in the middle of the five hour SRT that had begun several hours ago. In the Telemetry area Mike Linney was running simulated mission data from the analog tape recorders through the telemetry decommutators. Les Hughes was selecting the different decom. formats corresponding to requests from CADFISS TM. I took over from Don Loughhead monitoring of the various data formats being transmitted to the Real Time Computers via Goddard Data Link.

Quietly and smoothly the night shift unplugged their headsets and withdrew from the activity as a fresh team got up to speed. Eventually all was calm, as we listened to the astronauts chatting away on Net 1.

We just watched and listened, except for the periodic computer keyboard entries and magnetic tape changes. Both the Command and Telemetry computer software were functioning perfectly. By midday people began to file into the operations areas, secretaries, store men, clerks, maintenance men.

When I looked around they were all standing like statues silently behind me. Even Bill Shaw the station gardener had abandoned his ride-on mower. Everyone stood well back, though, as we scanned the rows of blinking lights on the computers and peripheral equipment with one eye and with our other eye on the flickering CCTV monitors, waiting for the first sign of a picture from the Moon.

Suddenly the flickering blank greyness on the monitor gave way to a fuzzy black and white scene of a ladder upside down. A few seconds later ‘Video Von’ (Ed von Renouard) flicked the switch to invert the image.

I managed to stretch my headset cable far enough to look over Ed’s shoulder and see the Slow Scan monitor and know that I was viewing the historic scene microseconds ahead of the rest of the world’s media.”

Honeysuckle’s video tech Ed von Renouard at the slow scan TV processing rack. The slow scan TV picture from Apollo 11 was displayed on the monitor at the top left. The switch to invert the image is the small toggle switch directly above his head. This photo, supplied by Hamish Lindsay, was taken by an unknown photographer during Apollo 12.

Tom Reid, Honeysuckle Creek Station Director:

“There were four contingencies which resulted in Honeysuckle Creek being the station which sent the picture of Neil Armstrong’s footstep around the world.

First of all the original Flight Plan called for the egress to occur when the Goldstone and Parkes 64 metre antennas were in view, so there would be 100 per cent redundancy in 64 metre antennas. Armstrong, however decided to come out early, and the Mission Controllers decided they wouldn’t oppose that. Because of that, when they actually did come out Parkes didn’t have a view because they had an elevation constraint, only able to come down to 29° 38’ above the horizon (the moon wasn’t high enough for the Lunar Module’s signals to enter their main beam).

Unfortunately at the same time there was a problem at Goldstone, and they were sending a poor quality slow scan upside-down TV picture back. Due to the transmitter failure earlier at Tidbinbilla, Honeysuckle Creek was tracking the Lunar Module.”

Eight minutes after the television was switched on, the CSIRO’s 64 metre antenna at Parkes came on line at 1302 AEST when the LM on the moon rose high enough above the horizon for its signal to enter the main feed of the big dish providing a 10db increase in signal strength over the Honeysuckle signal. Neil Mason hunched over his controls, concentrating on following the LM’s signals while around him he could hear alarm bells mixed with creaks and thumps as the motors tried to hold the antenna against the onslaught of the wind tearing at the dish. Worried staff were studying the strain gauges, wondering how much punishment the antenna could take. Bolton gave the order to keep going. When a clear picture appeared on their screens from the main feed at Parkes, Sydney Video switched to the Parkes signal and remained with those pictures for the rest of the two-and-a-half hour broadcast.

Sydney Video advised Houston TV:

Sydney Video: “Houston TV, Sydney Video.”
Houston TV : “Houston TV, Go ahead.”
Sydney Video: “Please be advised I have a very good picture from Parkes, shall I give it to you?”
Houston TV : “Roger”
Sydney Video: “You have it.”
Houston TV : “Roger, beautiful picture, thank you.”
Houston TV: “We are switching to Parkes at this time.”

Network : “Honeysuckle, Network.”
Station Director Tom Reid: “Network, Honeysuckle.”
Network : “You might pass on to the Parkes people their labour was not in vain, they’ve given us the best TV yet.”
Reid: “Roger, thank you very much, they’ll appreciate that, they’re monitoring.”

Within 14 minutes, at 1310 AEST, Aldrin began backing cautiously out of the LM’s hatch.

Aldrin: “Okay, Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch.... making sure not to lock it on my way out!”
Armstrong chuckled: “A particularly good thought.”
Aldrin: “That’s our home for the next couple of hours, we want to take good care of it.”

Buzz backing out of the hatch of the LM.

Aldrin worked his way down the ladder and jumped onto the LM’s footpad. He also tried to leap back onto the ladder, but missed the bottom rung by about two centimetres, so tried again...

Armstrong: “There you’ve got it.”
Aldrin: “That’s a good last step.....!”
Armstrong: “Yeah, about a three footer.”
Aldrin: “Beautiful view!”
“Isn’t that something! Magnificent sight out here,” Armstrong greeted 39 year old Edwin Eugene Aldrin from Montclair, New Jersey, as he joined him to become the second man to step onto the lunar surface.
“Magnificent desolation.” returned Aldrin, searching for an appropriate remark, was inspired by Armstrong’s comment.

FIRST WALK IN ANOTHER WORLD

Aldrin:

“Stepping out of the Lunar Module’s shadow was a shock. One moment I was in total darkness, the next in the sun’s hot floodlight. I stuck my hand out past the shadow’s edge into the sun, and it was like punching through a barrier into another dimension.”

 

Armstrong steps into the Sun as he waits for Aldrin to descend the ladder.

 

The two astronauts found the spacesuits very comfortable with little interference to their mobility, except when bending down to pick up objects from the lunar surface. The suits were designed to cope with the extreme conditions expected in the lunar environment, isolating the astronauts from the vacuum outside and the wildly fluctuating temperatures. The temperature of the ground they were walking on could vary from 110°C in the sunlight to 170°C in the shade. Armstrong said he was not aware of any temperature changes inside the suit while he touched objects or walked about.

Armstrong:

“From inside the cockpit the moon looked warm and inviting. The sky was black but it looked like daylight out on the surface, and the surface looked tan. There is a very peculiar lighting effect on the lunar surface, which seems to make the colours change. If you look down sun, down along your own shadow, or into the sun, the moon is tan. If you look cross-sun it is darker, and if you look straight down at the surface, particularly in the shadows, it looks very, very dark. When you pick up material in your hands it is also dark, grey or black.

The material is of a generally fine texture, almost like flour, but some coarser particles are like sand. Then there are, of course, scattered rocks and rock chips of all sizes.”

The equipment on their backs had weighed 38 kilograms on Earth, but on the Moon they were only 6.3 kilograms.

Aldrin:

“I felt buoyant and was full of goose pimples, I quickly discovered that I felt balanced comfortably upright only when I was tilted slightly forward. I also felt a bit disorientated: on the Earth when one looks at the horizon, it appears flat; on the moon, so much smaller than the Earth and quite without high terrain, the horizon in all directions visibly curved away from us.”

Armstrong:

“After landing we felt very comfortable in the lunar gravity. It was, in fact, in our view preferable both to weightlessness and to the Earth’s gravity.”

Aldrin added,

“One sixth gravity was agreeable, less lonesome than weightlessness, I had a distinct feeling of being somewhere.”

Armstrong felt they had landed in a timeless place, with no changes to mark time passing as we know it. Although the astronauts were locked into the time in Texas, here at Tranquillity the scene would have been just the same a thousand years ago, and probably the same a thousand years in the future. With no atmosphere, they found that everything they could see was starkly clear; features on the horizon were as sharp and clear as the rocks at their feet.

Aldrin looked above the LM. The Earth hung in a black sky, a disk cut in half by the day night terminator. It was mostly blue, with swirling white clouds, and he could make out a brown land mass [Australia!]. Glancing down at his boots, he realised that the soil he and Armstrong were stomping through had been there longer than any of those brown continents.

The astronauts set up the Stars and Stripes flag, finding it difficult to punch the pole into the lunar soil, or lurain as some like to call it. They only managed to sink it into the soil about 20 centimetres, then lean it so the weight of the flag didn’t pull it over.

After a debate on which flags to use it ended up as the Stars and Stripes as the Congress of the USA financed the whole project. It was not a territorial claim but was seen as a symbol of freedom and to identify the nation that achieved the first landing. Due to temperatures expected to rise to 1,000°C during the lunar landing the flag assembly was stowed in a shroud clamped to side of the ladder on the morning of departure from Earth. Aldrin felt the $US5.50 flag symbolised an “almost mystical unification of all people in the world at that moment,” though he was dreading the possibility of the flag collapsing into the dust in front of the millions of viewers.

At 1330 AEST the two astronauts gathered around the LM’s steps and ‘unveiled’ a small plaque to commemorate the historic landing mounted on a strut between the third and fourth rungs of the ladder.

Aldrin (centre) and Armstrong unveil the plaque. Picture through Parkes.

In Washington President Richard Nixon was watching the moon walk in the White House with Frank Borman from Apollo 8 and Bob Haldeman. It was nearly midnight as they were standing around the television set in his private office when they watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon.

At 1349 AEST he went into the Oval Office next door where the media TV cameras had been set up for his split screen phone call to the moon. Armstrong’s voice was coming through loud and clear through Goldstone. The President said:

“Because of what you have done the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquillity, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and Tranquillity to Earth. For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one. One in their pride in what you have done. One in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.”

Away up beyond the sky, where it was a bright sunlit 11 pm by their watches, the men on the moon paused and listened to their President. His voice was being transmitted through the Wing at Tidbinbilla to Collins, and through Goldstone to Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar surface. Armstrong responded with:

“Thank you Mr. President. Its a great honour and privilege for us to be here, representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, and with interest and a curiosity and a vision for the future. Its an honour for us to be able to participate here today.”
Nixon: “Thank you very much, and I look forward, all of us look forward to seeing you on the Hornet on Thursday.”
Aldrin: “I Look forward to that very much, sir.”

Aldrin saluted the camera sitting there on its tripod in that desolate, empty wasteland, and the two astronauts turned to the job of collecting more samples of moon rocks.

Buzz Aldrin working at the MESA.

Armstrong threw a rock with the comment, “You can really throw things a long way out here.” As he darted about collecting the rock samples, his pulse rate went up from 90 to 140, peaking at 160, as he hauled the samples up into the LM with a special tackle called the LEC (Lunar Equipment Conveyor) he nick-named the “Brooklyn clothes line.”

One of the rare pictures of Armstrong, here working at the LM.

An important part of the Apollo missions was to leave a scientific package on the moon’s surface for the tracking stations on Earth to monitor the conditions around the landing site after the astronauts left. Apollo 11’s package was called EASEP (Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package), while the remaining lunar landing missions left a more elaborate package called ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Scientific Experiments Package).

The instruments measured particles from the sun, the moon’s seismic activity, and a laser beam reflector for accurately measuring the distance between the Earth and moon. Carnarvon’s 9 metre dish was scheduled to track EASEP, at times it was the prime support. In the last hour of their walk they set out the EASEP equipment.

BACK TO THE LUNAR MODULE

At 0211 USCDT (1711 AEST) the hatch was closed to complete a 2 hour 47 minute 14 second moonwalk. As the two astronauts struggled with the rocks and suits in the cramped LM cabin there was a 10 minute break in voice communications with the ground as they had to fold their back pack antennas to avoid damage to the LM’s interior.

Their first chore was to pressurise the LM’s cabin and to begin stowing the rock boxes, film magazines, and anything else they wouldn’t need until they were docked again with Columbia. They removed their boots and the EMUs, opened the hatch and threw them onto the lunar surface.

Houston did not miss anything,

“Roger, Tranquillity. We observed your equipment jettison on the TV and the passive seismic experiment recorded shocks when each PLSS hit the surface – over.”
“You can’t get away with anything any more, can you?” Armstrong registered a jocular complaint.

The second backpack is dumped down the ladder. Click the image to see the first PLSS highlighted as it rests at the bottom of the leg. The second PLSS backpack has just been pushed out of the door and is on the porch, about to tumble end over end down the ladder. From a Super 8 movie by Ed von Renouard. Scan: David Woods.

They expected the lunar dust particles to float around inside the LM, but were surprised to find that they never did, generally staying where they lodged, probably due to the fact they were so dry they were attracted to anything with static electricity. This meant they were able to remove their helmets without the worry of the dust getting in their eyes and noses.

At 2025 AEST the tired astronauts finally put blinds over the windows and curled up to rest. They both decided to sleep with their helmets and gloves on, hoping there would be less noise, they would be warmer, there was less chance of breathing lunar dust, and they would not have to find somewhere to stow them.

The later missions supplied hammocks for sleeping, but not for Apollo 11, so Aldrin lay on the floor with his feet up against the side, or bent his knees, as the cabin wasn’t wide enough to stretch out. Armstrong sat on the cover of the ascent engine, leaned against the rear of the cabin, and suspended his legs through a loop of waist tether he had rigged up from a handhold. After he settled down Armstrong found there was an annoying pump gurgling somewhere near his head, and he could not avoid seeing the Earth glaring at him like a big blue and white eyeball through the Alignment Optical Telescope, so he had to get up and block the Earth light off. The window blinds did not block enough light out enough either.

After a rest period of 12 hours, both astronauts agreed they did not sleep very well. Apart from the emotional high from excitement of the day they became progressively colder, though they tried turning the suit water temperature up to maximum, then disconnecting the water flowing through their suits. Aldrin finally adjusted the temperature of the airflow through the suit and they felt better. The cabin temperature was steady at 16°C. Dr. Kenneth Biers at Houston said the data he received from Armstrong (they were not monitoring Aldrin) indicated that he may have slept fitfully and dozed, but stirred around quite a bit. Armstrong admitted he found it hard to unwind after the excitement of the day.

Bryan Sullivan in computers remembers the end of his shift,

“For once our long car trip home that day was very quiet as we all contemplated the events of this extraordinary event. I was still hyped on coffee and adrenalin as I arrived home. My wife’s first words to me were: ‘I was worried! What made Armstrong spring back up onto the ladder as soon as he’d put his foot on the surface? Had he seen something horrible? Did he get a fright?’ I explained that it was a safety procedure to make sure he could actually get up the ladder again in the bulky spacesuit.”

 

---

 

Heading Home

HSK MISSION DAY 6	Tuesday 22 July 1969
LM Liftoff : 0354 AEST only Madrid tracking
Docking : 0735 AEST Goldstone and Madrid tracking
LM Jettison : 0957 AEST only Goldstone tracking
Final Lunar Orbits, TEI burn and TEC

LUNAR LAUNCH

At 1213 USCDT on July 21 (0313 AEST 22 July) the LM astronauts were woken up by Ron Evans, the Houston Capcom with,

“How is the resting standing up there? Did you get a chance to curl up on the engine can?”
Aldrin: “Roger, Neil has rigged himself a really good hammock with a waist tether, and he’s been lying on the ascent engine cover, and I curled up on the floor.”

After 21 hours on the lunar surface, the two lunar explorers prepared their ship for lift off. Ron Evans in Houston passed a message up: “Our guidance recommendation is PNGCS, and you’re cleared for take off.”
Aldrin: “Roger, understand, we’re No 1 on the runway.”

Right on time at 1254 USCDT July 21 (0354 AEST 22 July), the rocket engine that had to fire, fired.
Aldrin:

“Okay, master arm on 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... abort stage, engine arm ascent, proceed. That was beautiful.”
“26, 36 feet per second up. Be advised of the pitch over. Very smooth... very quiet ride....”

Pushed by the 1,587 kilogram thrust of the LM ascent engine for seven minutes, the tiny spacecraft shot up into the black lunar sky, picking up speed from 48 kilometres per hour after 10 seconds to 2,890 kilometres per hour. The astronauts heard no sounds but only felt the acceleration and a high frequency vibration through their feet. As the rocket’s exhaust gases shredded the gold foil insulation and sprayed the pieces around the landing place, Aldrin looked out of the window long enough to see their flag topple over in the blast from the rocket motor.

Only Madrid was tracking the LM as it soared up into the black lunar sky.

Seconds after liftoff, the LM pitched forward about 45 degrees, and though the astronauts had anticipated it would be abrupt and maybe even a frightening manoeuvre, the harnesses securing them cushioned the tilt enough to make it barely noticeable. Both astronauts were busy with their respective tasks, Aldrin working on the computer, and Armstrong keeping track of the flight and navigation.

Evans: “Eagle, Houston. You’re go at three minutes, everything’s looking good.”
Armstrong: “Roger.”
Armstrong: “We’re going right down US one.”

With the ascent stage of the LM on its way home the two astronauts now began to feel confident that Apollo 11 was really going to make it. There had been no real surprises on the moon’s surface after all.

EAGLE RETURNS TO COLUMBIA

Up in the Command Module Collins was preparing to meet his companions with a book of 18 different procedures to rendezvous slung around his neck.

While Columbia kept a steady course 97 kilometres above the lunar surface, Eagle climbed into a 75.6 kilometres orbit and soon Collins had a radar lock on it, showing it to be 400 kilometres behind. As the Earth waited for the two spacecraft