While Armstrong and Aldrin worked on the moon, astronaut Michael Collins orbited overhead in their command module, waiting for his crew members to return. So in honor of National Moon Day-which, yes, is an actual unofficial holiday-we have a great tune to download about Earth’s own natural satellite. Like a proper test pilot, he took over from the computers and put the Eagle down safely, with 25 seconds’.
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President John F. Kennedy future the adventurous task that often he described as “landing an individual on the Moon and surrendering him without any problems to the Earth”.
The moon landing and walk took place 4 days after the Apollo 11 blasted off from the Cape Kennedy launch pad.
Armstrong told Mission Control, the group of nervous scientists assisting the flight from earth, “OK, i’m going to step off the LEM (Lunar Module) now”. “The camera was mounted behind the right forward window of the lunar module and was used to film the final phase of the descent to the lunar surface, the landing [and] Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s activities on the lunar surface, including taking the first samples of lunar soil and planting the US flag”, notes a release from the NASA’s Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal.
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More than a half billion people watched the televised first moonwalk July 20, 1969, where Neil Armstrong uttered the now-famous words, “That is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. They returned via the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969. The majority reentered as expected, though some circled the planet for years before falling back to Earth.
