On Sunday, July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong spacecraft commander of Apollo 11, and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the lunar soil. It was nearly fifty-one years ago. Let’s celebrate this great achievement together.
July 20, 1969: “a small step for man, but a giant step for mankind.” In total, 12 American astronauts will have walked on the Moon within the framework of six Apollo missions carried out between July 1969 and December 1972.
Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong will be the first of them, and Harrison Schmitt will be the last man and the only scientist to set foot on the Moon.
We also owe Neil Armstrong the most famous phrase from the American space program.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin haven’t slept in a long time. They are in the process of finishing fitting out inside the small lunar module “Eagle.”
A few hours earlier, the Lunar Module had landed in a cloud of dust somewhere in the Sea of Tranquility, this flat area that can easily be seen with the naked eye when looking at the Moon.
To be seen up close, the region (Sea of Tranquility), is more rugged than it looks from Earth. At the controls of the Lunar Module at the moon landing, Armstrong narrowly avoided a crater filled with huge stones.
“It’s very beautiful and colorless,” says Aldrin
He had to extend the descent by landing a little further. The craft was already a little higher than expected, and specialists from the Houston control center took more than a quarter of an hour to determine the exact touchdown point.
“It’s very beautiful and colorless,” says Aldrin. It is gray and very light gray towards the Sun, and it is considerably darker gray when you look at 90 ° from the Sun. Some of the rocks that have been broken or jostled by the reactor are enveloped in this light gray light outside. But when they were broken, you see a dark, very dark interior, and it looks like basalt. “
Right after the moon landing, Armstrong and Aldrin began by preparing the Lunar Module for takeoff. The device must be ready. The departure can’t be rushed. There is no emergency, and the crew is four hours ahead of schedule. They did not rest.
It will then take three and a half hours for the men to equip themselves fully. Between the PLSS (Portable Life Support System), which contains what is called the life support (oxygen, air conditioner), and the huge boots covering the shoes of the spacesuit (and to whom we undoubtedly owe the fashion of “Moon Boots”), the equipment is sophisticated and bulky.
Throughout subsequent missions, it will improve and, in particular, become more flexible. The first version, launched by the Apollo 11 mission, does little to bend the knees.
A man takes a step, and humankind looks at him
The LM (Lunar Module) does not have an airlock. To exit, the two astronauts open a valve that evacuates the interior atmosphere into a vacuum.
It has been decided that Armstrong will exit first, because it is said that he is a civilian, while Aldrin is a soldier, and that, symbolically, this trip is a mission of peace.
It is, therefore, the test pilot (all the same a former military pilot during the Korean War) who goes back down the scale of the Lunar Model. Fixed outside, a camera must film it in black and white. Armstrong pulls a joystick to start shooting.
Among all the creators of science fiction stories telling the discovery of other worlds. None had dared to imagine this situation. A single man descends a ladder and, thanks to the camera, to the radio link, transmitting them to Earth and on television networks and hundreds of millions of spectators watching it.
All over the planet, whatever the local time, women, men, and children are dumbfounded witnesses to the slow descent of this trembling human silhouette (because of the images, not because of Neil Armstrong, the man who never loses his composure). The images are not clear. They are also extraordinarily contrasting.
The shadows are dark, and the illuminated areas are dazzling white. It is not a defect in the camera. The Moon has no atmosphere to diffuse sunlight. Shaded areas can, therefore, only receive that reflected in the right direction by nearby objects.
The Moon’s unknown surface
Out of the lighted places, it’s a dark night. On the Moon, a ray of Sun through a shutter does not light a room. This characteristic will very much annoy the astronauts.
No one really knows what Armstrong is going to encounter at the bottom of the ladder. Dust, surely. But how hard? Some fear it will sink deep. Is there a risk of losing your balance?
The simulations did not make it possible to perfectly recreate the walking of a human being who weighs six times less but retains his mass.
Armstrong jumps the last 90 centimeters, without bars, and lands on the foot of the Lunar Module, in the shape of a large dish.
Armstrong describes everything he does and everything he sees
Armstrong describes everything he does and everything he sees. “The feet of the Lunar Module sank only one or two inches,” he explains. The soil is therefore relatively firm.
He notices what all the moonwalkers will see after him and what is today the nightmare of the engineers who prepare the return to the Moon. “The surface seems to be made of very, very fine grains when you approach it. It looks like powder. “
Six hundred million Earthlings await the continuation. We follow its movements inch by inch. Armstrong lengthens the left leg (yes, the left, will remember History) and feels the ground with his foot.
“It’s one small step”
The Moon Boot does not seem to sink. “I will now take a step outside the LM. ” On Earth, an earthquake would not have disturbed viewers.
“It’s one small step for (a) man but a giant leap for mankind. ” Here. It’s done. It is 3:56 a.m. in Paris, but nobody watches the time.
Man has walked on the Moon. We walked on the Moon. Everyone walked on the Moon at this precise moment. In his sentence intended to be engraved in marble, Armstrong has slightly overshadowed the “a.” It is, therefore, a small step for a man but a giant leap for humanity. And that’s how humans felt then.
In the Shadow of the Moon
Later, Michael Collins will tell (he reports in the superb documentary In the Shadow of the Moon) how he was struck, thereafter, by the collective feeling felt by all the people he met.
“Everywhere in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, they did not say” the Americans walked on the Moon “, or” The United States went to the Moon “, they said,” we succeeded “.
This ON was great, and it was an incredible feeling of unity, ephemeral perhaps but very beautiful. Thanks to Hergé, by the way, for having, too, and so long before, titled his second opus in the lunar saga of Tintin and his friends.
Armstrong still hasn’t let go of the Lunar Module ladder. He traces a furrow in the ground, like a child on the sand of a beach. He finally lets go of the ladder and takes a few steps. “The surface is fine and powdery. I can fly it with the tip of my foot. It adheres to thin layers, like coal dust.
I’m only sinking a fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch (an astronaut from another country could have said about three millimeters), but I can see the imprints of my boots .”
“It seems that there is no difficulty in getting around.”
He walks. “It seems that there is no difficulty in getting around. It may even be easier than during simulations.
He turns around, looks at his friend Buzz through the Lunar Module window, and bends down to immediately pick up a few stones and puts them in a pocket (on the left leg, says History). If an emergency return were necessary, the mission would at least bring it back.
Armstrong is alone on the floor for nineteen minutes. It moves away from the LM but very little. Aldrin joins him. Armstrong films him going down the ladder.
Throughout this EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity), Armstrong has a camera. This is why all the images show Aldrin. Armstrong must also take care of the one who, fixed on the Lunar Module, continues to transmit images.
He spins it to offer a panorama, but, like so many amateur filmmakers, he moves too fast, and Houston must ask him to start again.
The two astronauts, together, carry out a first, symbolic work.
The two astronauts, together, carry out a first, symbolic work. They reveal a plaque, affixed on one of the feet of the Lunar Module (therefore on the first floor which will remain on the Moon), explaining that men, here, one day in July 1969 AD ( Anno Domini ), came in peace.
They will then plant an American flag, held in place by tubes, and pressed in a hurry (this is the only work they had not repeated).
Armstrong and Aldrin then learn to walk.
Nothing is like on Earth. The weight is lower. We feel light, and we can jump easily. But beware, the mass is still there and with it inertia. If you run, you stop less quickly than you think.
In the Moons shade, it’s almost dark.
As for light, it is misleading. Near the direction of the Sun is glare. Cameras and cameras set for a violent light, erase the stars. In the shade, it’s almost dark.
In the absence of known benchmarks, trees, for example, in general greyness and with a closer horizon, distances and slopes are difficult to assess.
Mobility of the spacesuit
Aldrin has a particular mission: to test the mobility of the spacesuit. So he tries out different movements and tries to jump with both feet. Other astronauts will have fun with this, too, but the method does not seem the right one.
Aldrin takes a slightly swaying and fast walk. Subsequently, moonwalkers with more flexible spacesuits will find the sensations of Aldrin and quickly adopt running rather than walking.
Nixon calls the Apollo 11 crew
They have to stop because of a phone call. It is none other than Richard Nixon, President of the United States, explaining that he talks to them from the Oval Office in the White House. “It is certainly the most historic call we have ever made,” he said.
The work is far from over. The two men must install two scientific instruments, stored in the chests of the Lunar Module. A seismometer will transmit to Earth any tremors of the lunar soil.
A reflector will reflect part of a laser beam sent from the Earth. It is oriented at 5 ° towards our planet and composed of a hundred small mirrors in “cube-corner”, in quartz which has the property of returning an incident light in the direction from which it comes, after three reflections, on each side.
Such mirrors, also deposited by other Apollo missions but also by Soviet missions. It will make it possible in the following years and decades to measure, by telemetry, the distance between the Earth and the Moon with centimeters accuracy.
Lunar dust, the new enemy for Moon explorers
Neil Armstrong leaves Buzz Aldrin alone and walks away (sixty meters!). In the direction of the “Little West Crater,” overflown just before the moon landing.
The term west indicates that it is located in the western part of the area planned for the moon landing. He takes some photographs and returns to Aldrin.
There are still stones to collect. The two men pick up 21.7 kg and return to the Lunar Module. They abandon equipment on the Moon, to lighten their craft as much as possible.
The Moondust “smells of gunpowder”
The spacewalk will have lasted two h 31, and the first two moonwalkers will have covered 250 meters.
Armstrong and Aldrin get rid of their coveralls and find that this damned dust,” that smells of gunpowder, “says Aldrin, sticks to everything.
Subsequent studies and subsequent lunar explorations will show why. Made up of little slag spiky with spikes, it clings to anything.
It is powerfully corrosive but also allergenic. To top it off, it floats above the lunar surface due to electrostatic forces.
Neil and Buzz are resting
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, for the first time in a long time, are resting. The first climb on a bonnet, the other curls up on the ground, and Houston leave them alone.
Upon awakening, preparations for takeoff begin. Aldrin starts to tinker. By putting on his suit, he broke the push button on a circuit breaker, used to ignite the ascent motor.
Aldrin’s famous pen
Without him, no takeoff. He chooses a pen, removes the cap, and finds that the diameter corresponds to that of the pusher. Even today, he claims to always carry this pen with him.
Twenty-one hours and 36 minutes after the moon landing, the second stage engine of Eagle lifts the ship in a perfect takeoff. It propels it towards space where the Columbia command module awaits it.
In orbit at 110 kilometers, leaving on the ground the first floor of the LM. The lunar module takes two turns of the Moon to reach the mother ship. Collins takes care of the meeting and hooks the Eagle.
It elevates the pressure of air in Columbia so that, on opening the lock between the two machines, the air Lunar Module, dusty and it is not known what can not enter the control module.
Michael Collins finds his two companions. The second stage of the Eagle is then lifted. Its orbit will cause it to crash into the Moon. Columbia’s engine is on. The spacecraft leaves the lunar orbit and is on a trajectory back to Earth.
The main mission assigned to the three men for the coming days is rest.
That’s it, and I hope you enjoyed this essay. Check out this article that reveals the inside of the Apollo Saturn V rocket and its significant components. See for yourself these fantastic drawings. You will be amazed.
The new book ‘How We Got to the Moon’ will reveal a stunning look at Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon.