One small step for man.. One giant leap for mankind

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the man landing on the moon

Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on the 16th July at 9:32 U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), and was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. Then four days later at 4.17pm U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on the 20th July 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon. Armstrong radioed, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”  About six-and-a-half hours later, at 10:56 PM EDT, Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar soil with the words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Aldrin joined Armstrong on the Moon’s surface about 20 minutes later. After 21 hours 38 minutes on the Moon’s surface, the astronauts used Eagle’s ascent stage to launch it back into lunar orbit.
After various maneuvers, Eagle once again docked with Columbia, and the trip back to Earth began soon afterward. Splashdown of Apollo 11 occurred in the Pacific Ocean about 1,400 km (900 miles) southwest of Hawaii on the 24th July. After their return, the astronauts were quarantined for 21 days from the time Eagle had left the Moon. The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.


Did you know

Saturn V is still the largest and most powerful rocket ever built
Standing at more than 100m (363ft), the Saturn V rocket burned some 20 tonnes of fuel a second at launch. Propellant accounted for 85% of its overall weight.


Apollo's crew compartment was about the same size as a large car
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins spent eight days together travelling about half a million miles to the Moon and back in a space roughly the size of a large car. The astronauts were strapped into bench-like "couches" during launch and landing in the Command Module, which measured 3.9m (12.8ft) at its widest point.


African-American women skilled in maths helped to work out the route to the Moon
In the pre-digital age, Nasa employed a large number of female mathematicians as "human computers". Many were African-Americans.  Their work processing data and performing complicated calculations was critical to the success of the space programme.


They peed into condoms and wore nappies
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins didn’t even have the luxury of a loo onboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft as they were propelled towards orbit from Florida in front of one million spectators.
During their eight days in Space, the trio had to pee into a ‘roll-on cuff’ — a rubber tube that resembled a condom and was hooked up to a ‘receiver’ tube and a collection bag.

They left souvenirs on the moon
Armstrong and Aldrin left a range of items on the Moon before heading back to our planet.
These included a tiny silicon disk, about the size of a 50-cent piece, containing messages of peace from 73 leaders across the world — including the Queen. Other souvenirs left behind on the lunar surface included the American flag, a small replica of an olive branch, and a plaque proclaiming “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

Mission duration 8 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds