Operation Moonglow

by Teasel Muir-Harmony

  The Symbolic Activities Committee sent its final recommendations to President Nixon in early July, shortly before the mission. The package included the plaque mounted to the leg of the lunar module Eagle, the silicon disk, fifty small US state flags, a United Nations flag, small flags of each of the countries that belonged to the United Nations, as well as a large American flag to plant in the lunar soil.24 During the flight the inclusion of international flags on the mission made headlines. A story on the Ghanaian flag taken to the moon, for instance, made the front page of a major newspaper in Accra.25 The Apollo 11 crew also carried mementos from the three astronauts and two cosmonauts who had perished on earlier missions. When astronaut Frank Borman visited the Soviet Union shortly before the mission, he was given medals from Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin to include on the upcoming lunar flight.26

  Although not planned by the Symbolic Activities Committee, the Apollo 11 mission emblem adopted similarly all-encompassing imagery. The Apollo 11 crew decided unanimously to eschew tradition and opt for inclusion by leaving their names off the emblem. They wrote out “11” rather than spelling out the word “eleven” so people from non-English-speaking countries could understand it more easily. Collins traced a bald eagle from a National Geographic bird book and then added “a pockmarked lunar surface,” with Earth in the distance. The eagle’s talons looked too aggressive, so Collins placed an olive branch in them: a traditional symbol of peace. With the national bird at the center, the mission patch communicated subtly that it was a US program. The naming of the lunar module Eagle followed the emblem design.27

  On May 18, 1969, NASA launched Apollo 10. Widely regarded as the “dress rehearsal” for the moon landing, Apollo 10 performed all the mission events that Apollo 11 would carry out in July, except for the descent, landing, moonwalk, and ascent from the lunar surface. The Apollo 10 crew brought the lunar module within 47,400 feet of the moon’s surface, passing over the planned primary landing sites for Apollo 11. As they passed each site, the astronauts tested radar, made visual observation of lunar lighting, took stereo photography, and performed the phasing maneuver using the lunar module’s descent engine. The ascent engine performed an insertion maneuver, and shortly docked with the CSM in lunar orbit.28

  The Apollo 11 mission emblem. (SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM)

  The eight-day Apollo 10 mission also served as a dress rehearsal for the USIA’s global public relations campaign planned for Apollo 11. The television broadcasts from the mission broke records in Chile, surpassing any other single broadcast in the country’s history. Other newspaper coverage commented on the absence of American gloating. London’s Sunday Telegraph mentioned approvingly that “we have been spared any trace of propaganda.”29 As M. V. Kamath of the Times of India described it, “The Apollo 10 astronauts swept into the lunar orbit yesterday and beamed back the first colour telecast of the moon in sunshine and earthshine and the pictures were stunningly beautiful… the details were so sharp and distinct that one almost seemed to peer over the brims of some of the craters oneself.”30

  For the Voice of America (VOA), Apollo 10 acted as a test run for determining staffing needs and language service requirements. Radio coverage of Apollo 10 also promoted the upcoming Apollo 11 mission and offered free giveaways: a NASA color fact sheet and the Raytheon Corporation’s “Mission Analyzer,” both detailing the stages of the Apollo 11 mission. By June, the agency had already received fourteen thousand letters requesting the items.31 It quickly became apparent that the scale of Apollo 11 would not only outstrip Apollo 10 but that it would be larger than any other projects undertaken in VOA’s twenty-seven-year history.

  By June, prelaunch promotion programming was in full swing. VOA supplied foreign national networks and radio stations with more than five thousand individual programs. As part of the preparatory activities, the VOA asked posts to mount publicity campaigns for the upcoming Apollo 11 coverage by putting up posters and placing advertisements in local press and magazines. USIS Singapore designed its own posters encouraging people to “Follow Apollo over VOA” and distributed them to radio shops, schools, community centers, and other locations. In the weeks before the flight, newspapers from Lagos to Kabul contained advertisements promoting Apollo 11 and VOA coverage. The BBC made an agreement to broadcast VOA coverage on its domestic service throughout the United Kingdom. In order to reach audiences in China, Korea, and Russia, the VOA planned satellite circuits to relay stations in the Philippines, Thailand, and Okinawa.32

  In mid-June the Apollo 11 launch date was set. On July 16, just one month later, the United States would send humans to the moon. At this point, the astronauts moved into the Merritt Island crew quarters with, as Collins described, “my bottle of gin and my bottle of vermouth, and a heavy load removed from either shoulder. One month to get ready, one month working at maximum capacity with minimum interference.”33 The accommodations were simple: a living room, windowless bedrooms, a gym, sauna, dining room, kitchen, and briefing room. Each day they got up early, quickly ate breakfast, and then headed off to the nearby simulators to train. After dinner each night they reviewed phases of the mission before bed and then awaited another day of training.34

  Also in mid-June, the USIA in cooperation with NASA opened an Apollo News Center (ANC) in Paris. The ANC supported foreign newspaper coverage of the launch, handled telephone and in-person inquiries, distributed printed material, and hosted media correspondents from countries where live television coverage was not available.35

  Prelaunch coverage of Apollo 11 was particularly extensive because public diplomats recognized that commercial media would not focus on the mission until just before the launch. Together, the USIA and State Department produced a barrage of information programs to heighten anticipation and excitement for the mission, sparing no expense to take advantage of this public relations opportunity. The USIA alone spent millions of dollars on Apollo 11 programming, a large percentage of the agency’s annual budget.36 Leading up to the flight, the VOA broadcast hundreds of features and documentaries on space exploration in all regions of the world; films on space ran in hundreds of theaters and on television. The USIA also supplied material to support locally produced exhibits; in Bonn, for instance, the USIA provided material for two large German department store chains, which dedicated 180 window displays throughout the country to the story of Apollo 11.37

  By July, all individual USIS posts became small-scale space resource centers. The USIA sent posts kiosk exhibits, space-food samples, pamphlets in various languages, more than 900 models of the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo spacecraft, 10,000 lunar maps, 275 lunar landing charts, 240 16-inch moon globes, and countless publications.38 The USIS post in Taipei became a particularly key reference service for the Taiwanese media by organizing interviews with scientists, distributing pamphlets and articles, and acting as an Apollo 11 clearinghouse. The USIA Press and Publications Service created background articles, features, photos, and picture stories to distribute to foreign newspapers. The foreign media, according to USIA reports, picked up and published much of the material that the USIA news branch supplied. In Ethiopia the USIS post distributed astronaut food, including soup, chicken, and crackers, for the news media to sample. The USIS post in Tunisia covered its facade with large-scale photo murals of astronauts, the moon, and Earth, in addition to a large sign that renamed the post “Space Information Center.”39

  USIA Apollo exhibit in Kenya, 1969. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

  Space souvenirs became an important part of the USIA’s promotion of Apollo and its engagement with local populations. In downtown Belgrade, for instance, ten thousand people visited the USIS post, with the majority requesting Apollo 11 buttons. Each button depicted a graphic lunar module superimposed on the facepiece of an astronaut’s helmet with the word “APOLLO” appearing in bold. The buttons came in the colors of the US flag—red, white, and blue—but they did not include any direct reference to the United States. After the post’s supply o
f buttons ran out, staff printed thousands of photos of the astronauts to give away as a substitute. The post in Warsaw distributed 100,000 buttons by July 21. A Washington Post correspondent reported that thousands of people wore the buttons around the Polish capital.40

  Space exhibits reached millions more around the globe ahead of the mission. In Japan alone, nearly a million people visited the thirty-six Apollo 11 exhibits scattered around the country. For an exhibit in Delhi, the agency constructed a full-scale model of the lunar module, which drew an average of thirteen thousand visitors a day.41 At the First International Fair in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United States joined twenty-seven other nations from mid-June through mid-July. Project Apollo, the major focus of the US pavilion, was featured alongside a Department of Labor–sponsored exhibit on nation building. Attendance reached nearly 300,000 people, including Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko, who visited the US display three times over the course of the fair.42 During the Apollo 11 flight, locally trained Congolese narrators fielded questions from the audience. The Apollo portion of the pavilion included models of spacecraft, space food samples, and films on other missions, while the nation-building exhibit included displays of American poultry, wheat, and rice, promoting US spaceflight and industry simultaneously.43

  In Southeast Asia another large-scale exhibit, the American Pavilion at the Djakarta International Fair, also focused on the Apollo lunar landing. A twenty-five-foot-high model of the upper stage of a Saturn V, scale models of spacecraft and launch vehicles, a space suit, photo transparencies, and films captured the attention of more than a million people, including President Suharto and other high-ranking Indonesian officials. The USIA had trained Indonesian college students and graduates to be guides, and a leading Indonesian science commentator gave two presentations on space exploration. Live radio and video telecasts were broadcast from the site to reach an even wider audience.44

  The US pavilions in Djakarta and Kinshasa were split into two parts: half of the display was devoted to the American space program, and the other half was dedicated to commercially oriented development exhibits. The second half of these pavilions relied on the sponsorship of US private firms. Both of these pavilions, like other American exhibits abroad, recruited and trained local students to work as guides. Apollo displays became a useful technique for drawing crowds to the pavilions and exposing foreign audiences to non-space-themed programming. Many public diplomats knew that spaceflight, especially in the summer of 1969, would guarantee large crowds. Pairing spaceflight exhibits with other content became a useful way to promote general US products and policies abroad.

  USIA Apollo exhibit in Iceland, 1969. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

  American space documentaries played in movie theaters around the world, while television stations broadcast space-themed features in more than a hundred countries.45 During the two weeks before the launch, a Santiago TV studio produced six shows featuring Project Apollo. A Spanish-speaking USIA information officer and the director of a local NASA tracking station appeared on the programs. The agency organized outdoor viewing areas, from public squares to sports stadiums, allowing people who did not have their own televisions to view the preflight screenings of films and television shows as well as the moon landing coverage. For example, the USIS post in Seoul set up a projection system with a 19-foot-by-16-foot screen fastened to a building and streamed USIA space films for ten days before the Apollo 11 flight. USIS Delhi showed the Apollo 10 film on an outdoor screen to more than 68,000 people during a series of evening screenings. The USIA also organized private invitation-only film showings for local leaders, journalists, and academics. Some of these were held in the homes of American ambassadors or USIS officers. Newly appointed Venezuelan president Rafael Caldera invited a public affairs officer to his mansion to screen space-themed films and offer detailed narration for his Cabinet.46

  By 1969, the number of television sets around the world had grown twentyfold since the mid-1950s, reaching at least 150 million. NASA, the USIA, and other US government agencies had been planning for years to ensure that Apollo would reach these viewers.47 In 1961, when President Kennedy proposed Project Apollo to Congress, he also asked the nation to support the development of a worldwide satellite communications network. The following year Kennedy signed a bill for a public-private satellite communication partnership, which would be overseen by the president.48 The Communications Satellite Act of 1962 created the American Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), which would construct, manage, and operate a commercial communications satellite system in cooperation with businesses and foreign governments. When it became clear that COMSAT could not turn a profit without larger government investment, the NASA contract for the Apollo communication service went to COMSAT instead of the Department of Defense. This decision provided important revenue for COMSAT and supported the extension of the network to Asia, Africa, and Latin America.49

  In the early 1960s, the national television networks broadcast television programs that were sent by landlines or microwave networks or were replays of a tape or film relay. For instance, John Glenn’s 1962 flight was shown live on American television sets, but audiences in Europe and other parts of the world had access only to recorded tapes and film.50 In August 1964 COMSAT, in cooperation with ten other nations, formed Intelsat, an international organization to create a constellation of geosynchronous satellites. Nations interested in broadcasting Intelsat feeds could set up large Earth stations with dishes aimed at one of the satellites. This system allowed continuous feeds without the earlier issue of relays ending abruptly when a satellite in a lower orbit traveled beyond the horizon. In 1965 Intelsat launched Early Bird, a commercial geostationary satellite for transatlantic television transmission. Thanks to Early Bird, rechristened Intelsat I, North Americans and Europeans could watch Pope Paul VI’s visit to the United States, coverage of the Gemini program, news, and sports.51 Senator John Pastore (D., Rhode Island), chairman of the communication subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, reflected that satellites such as Early Bird “can become the show window through which America can and will be seen throughout the world. And indeed, it will be the mirror of our own image.”52

  With the growth of the Intelsat network, live coverage of spaceflight missions started reaching audiences in Asia as well as Europe. National networks ran many space-themed broadcasts because, according to one USIA assessment, science was viewed as politically neutral. In Indonesia, “space films [are] especially popular, probably a continuing hangover from days when that was the only material they dared use. [It is] still too soon for use of controversial political clips,” stated a USIA report in 1967.53

  By 1969, a series of Intelsat III satellites completed a truly global network just in time for the first lunar landing. Intelsat III F-3 was moved to geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean. When one of the three satellites in the network failed, the Intelsat I satellite (Early Bird) was put back into operation for coverage of the mission.54

  Press conference for Apollo 11, 1969. (NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION)

  Putting the global satellite network into operation in time for the landing also reflected well on US prestige. The official newspaper of Ivory Coast, Fraternité-Matin, commented that “the very fact that they installed two communications satellites instead of one to allow 600 million television viewers to see man’s first steps on the moon proves that the children of Uncle Sam will do nothing in secret which could compromise the progress of men on earth.” Although unctuous in tone, the article highlights the larger ramifications of creating a global communications infrastructure in time for Apollo 11.55

  While a physical communications infrastructure was being built up over the 1960s, the USIA fostered the careers of local spaceflight experts. USIS Belgrade arranged for Milivoj Jugin, a television journalist, to spend five days at Cape Canaveral and provided him with a documentary film team. Yugoslav television broadcast the film during the Apollo 7 launch
in the fall of 1968, which quickly cemented Jugin’s role as the country’s NASA expert. The USIA arranged and paid for his subsequent trips to Houston, Huntsville, and space laboratories in California, making sure that he would be home in Yugoslavia in time to cover the moon landing on national television.56 Erik Tandberg, a television personality from Oslo, had a similar story. After he became a technical consultant on space matters for NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), with US government support Tandberg traveled to NASA centers and met with personnel such as rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun. He took his firsthand experience touring aerospace centers in the United States on the air when he cohosted Norway’s moon landing coverage.57

  Aware that duplicating this widely available coverage would be of little political value to the United States, the agency instead focused much of its attention on reaching audiences outside of the established global communications network. USIA worked with foreign television networks to ensure that live coverage of the lunar landing would reach every potential TV set. In areas where live coverage was not available, the USIA shipped foreign television networks copies of TV clips of the major phases of the mission as well as a final wrap-up after splashdown.58 In 1969 Venezuela did not have a satellite ground station to receive the live television coverage of the lunar landing. Private stations in Venezuela as well as Colombia invested $230,000 to rent a portable ground station, while the USIA, along with help from the US Air Force, transported the station and equipment to Maracaibo. This collaboration between private industry and the USIA ensured that 1,500,000 television sets in Venezuela and Colombia could pick up Apollo 11 coverage, making the lunar flight the first international event to be seen live by these audiences.59 Israel’s television service planned the most extensive programming in the network’s brief history: a three-hour special on the historical, philosophical, religious, and technical facets of the moon landing. The network did not have access to the live satellite feed, so the USIA helped arrange a recording of the landing to be flown from London, ensuring a shot of the landing for Israeli audiences just a few hours after it occurred.60