The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of Project Apollo and the third human voyage to the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.[2]
The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe that 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 the Earth."[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Crew
1.1 Backup crew
1.2 Support crew
1.3 Flight directors
2 Nomenclature
3 Mission highlights
3.1 Launch and lunar orbit injection
3.2 Descent
3.3 Lunar surface operations
3.4 Lunar ascent and return
4 Spacecraft location
5 Mission insignia
6 40th Anniversary events
7 See also
8 Photo gallery
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links
11.1 NASA reports
11.2 Multimedia
Backup crew
Position Astronaut
Commander James A. Lovell, Jr
Command Module Pilot William A. Anders
Lunar Module Pilot Fred W. Haise, Jr
In early 1969 Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was delayed past its intended July launch (at which point Anders would be unavailable if needed) and would later join Lovell's crew and ultimately be assigned as the original Apollo 13 CMP.[4]Support crew
Support crew
Aldrin unpacks experiments from the LM, named Eagle.Charles Moss Duke, Jr., Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM)
Ronald Evans, CAPCOM
Owen K. Garriott, CAPCOM
Don L. Lind, CAPCOM
Ken Mattingly, CAPCOM
Bruce McCandless II, CAPCOM
Harrison Schmitt, CAPCOM
Bill Pogue
Jack Swigert
Flight directors
Cliff Charlesworth (Green Team), launch and EVA
Gene Kranz (White Team), lunar landing
Glynn Lunney (Black Team), lunar ascent
Nomenclature
Boilerplate Apollo command module depicting the "Apollo 11 Command Module, named Columbia. Displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.The lunar module was named Eagle after the bald eagle depicted on the insignia; the bald eagle is the national bird of the United States. The command module was named Columbia, from the traditional feminine name Columbia used for the United States in song and poetry. The name may also have been chosen in reference to the columbiad cannon used to launch the moonships in Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the Moon.[citation needed] Some internal NASA planning documents referred to the call signs as Snowcone and Haystack,[5] but these were quietly changed before being announced to the press.
Mission highlights
Launch and lunar orbit injection
Thousands of spectators camped out to watch the launch of Apollo 11 adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center.
The Saturn V carrying Apollo 11 took several seconds to clear the tower on July 16, 1969.
A condensation cloud forms around an interstage as the Saturn V approached Mach 1, one minute into the flight.
Engineers working in the launch control center.
The Eagle in lunar orbit immediately after separating from Columbia.In addition to throngs of people crowding highways and beaches near the launch site, millions watched the event on television, with NASA Chief of Public Information Jack King providing commentary. President Richard Nixon viewed the proceedings from the Oval Office of the White House.
A Saturn V launched Apollo 11 from the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969 at 13:32 UTC (9:32 a.m. local time). It entered orbit 12 minutes later.[1] After one and a half orbits, the S-IVB third-stage engine pushed the spacecraft onto its trajectory toward the Moon with the Trans Lunar Injection burn. About 30 minutes later the command/service module pair separated from this last remaining Saturn V stage and docked with the lunar module still nestled in the Lunar Module Adaptor. After the lunar module was extracted, the combined spacecraft headed for the Moon, while the third stage booster was directed toward the Sun.
On July 19 Apollo 11 passed behind the Moon and fired its service propulsion engine to enter lunar orbit. In the thirty orbits[6] that followed, the crew saw passing views of their landing site in the southern Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) about 20 kilometers (12 mi) southwest of the crater Sabine D (0.67408N, 23.47297E). The landing site was selected in part because it had been characterized as relatively flat and smooth by the automated Ranger 8 and Surveyor 5 landers along with the Lunar Orbiter mapping spacecraft and unlikely to present major landing or extra-vehicular activity (EVA) challenges.[7]
Descent
On July 20, 1969 the lunar module (LM) Eagle separated from the command module Columbia. Collins, alone aboard Columbia, inspected Eagle as it pirouetted before him to ensure the craft was not damaged.
As the descent began, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were passing landmarks on the surface 4 seconds early and reported that they were "long": they would land miles west of their target point.
The LM navigation and guidance computer distracted the crew with several unusual "1201" and "1202" program alarms. Inside Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, computer engineer Jack Garman told guidance officer Steve Bales it was safe to continue the descent and this was relayed to the crew. The program alarms were called "executive overflows", during which the computer could not process all of its tasks in real time and had to postpone some of them.[8] This was neither a computer error nor an astronaut error, but stemmed from a mistake in how the astronauts had been trained. Although unneeded for the landing, the rendezvous radar was intentionally turned on to make ready for a fast abort. Ground simulation setups had not foreseen that a fast stream of spurious interrupts from this radar could happen, depending upon how the hardware randomly powered up before the LM then began nearing the lunar surface: hence the computer had to deal with data from two radars, not the landing radar alone, which led to the overload.[9][10][11]
When Armstrong again looked outside, he saw that the computer's landing target was in a boulder-strewn area just north and east of a 400 meter diameter crater (later determined to be "West crater", named for its location in the western part of the originally planned landing ellipse). Armstrong took semi-automatic control[12] and, with Aldrin calling out altitude and velocity data, landed at 20:17 UTC on July 20 with about 25 seconds of fuel left.[13]
Apollo 11 landed with less fuel than other missions, and the astronauts also encountered a premature low fuel warning. It was later found to be caused by the lunar gravity permitting greater propellant 'slosh' which had uncovered a fuel sensor. On future missions, extra baffles were added to the tanks.[13]
Buzz Aldrin spoke the first words (albeit technical jargon) from the LM on the lunar surface. Throughout the descent Aldrin had called out navigation data to Armstrong, who was busy piloting the LM. As Eagle landed Aldrin said, "Contact light! Okay, engine stop. ACA - out of detent." Armstrong acknowledged "Out of detent" and Aldrin continued, "Mode control - both auto. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm - off. 413 is in."
It was then that Armstrong said the famous words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Armstrong's abrupt change of call sign from "Eagle" to "Tranquility Base" caused momentary confusion at Mission Control. Charles Duke, acting as CAPCOM during the landing phase, acknowledged their landing, expressing the relief of a Mission Control made nervous by a long landing that almost expended all of the lunar module Eagle's fuel. Duke's famous first words to the Apollo 11 crew on the surface of the moon were flustered: "Roger, Twank...Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue here. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!" expressing the relief of Mission Control after the unexpectedly drawn-out descent.[13][14]
Shortly after landing, before preparations began for the EVA, Aldrin broadcast that:
This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.[15]
He then took Communion privately. At this time NASA was still fighting a lawsuit brought by atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (who had objected to the Apollo 8 crew reading from the Book of Genesis) which demanded that their astronauts refrain from religious activities while in space. As such, Aldrin chose to refrain from directly mentioning this. He had kept the plan quiet (not even mentioning it to his wife) and did not reveal it publicly for several years.[citation needed] Buzz Aldrin was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster, TX. His communion kit was prepared by the pastor of the church, the Rev. Dean Woodruff. Aldrin described communion on the moon and the involvement of his church and pastor in the October, 1970 edition of Guideposts magazine and in his book "Return to Earth." Webster Presbyterian possesses the chalice used on the moon, and commemorates the Lunar Communion each year on the Sunday closest to July 20.[16]
The schedule for the mission called for the astronauts to follow the landing with a five-hour sleep period, since they had been awake since early morning. However, they elected to forgo the sleep period and begin the preparations for the EVA early, thinking that they would be unable to sleep
Apollo 11
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