by Dan Parry
Landmarks on routes approaching the most promising landing sites were photographed by Lunar Orbiter 3, and pictures from all three Orbiter missions helped the selection board whittle down the options to five areas. In looking for a flat plain in the east near the equator, the Sea of Tranquility stood out as an obvious candidate, and here two sites were chosen, ALS-1 and ALS-2. The first was inspected by Apollo 8, and Apollo 10 flew over the second, both bringing back pictures that helped the crew of Apollo 11 prepare for their own mission.46 It was decided that Armstrong and Aldrin would attempt to land at ALS-2, in the south-western part of the Sea of Tranquility. If the flight were delayed, secondary sites further west were located in the Sinus Medii (almost in the centre of the visible face of the Moon) and in the Ocean of Storms.
Meanwhile, having taken the first pictures of the far side of the Moon, the Russians continued to develop their Luna series of probes. In many cases their unmanned spacecraft outperformed America's just as decisively as their manned missions beat NASA's in achieving key objectives. Luna 9 landed on the Moon in January 1966, four months ahead of Surveyor 1. Although cosmonauts were unlikely to reach the surface, some in NASA feared that a Russian probe might still try to retrieve the first samples of lunar rocks. Three days before the launch of Apollo 11, on Sunday 13 July 1969, the Soviet Union announced that Luna 15 had been launched on a mission to the Moon. Amid US fears that Armstrong's crew would have to contend with a chunk of Russian metalwork in their vicinity, there were suggestions that Luna 15 might scoop up some dust and bring it home while Neil and Buzz were still strapping on their boots.
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Thirty-four minutes after Mission Control lost contact with the crew, the powerful antenna in Madrid picked up their signal as the spacecraft came within sight of the Earth. It was Houston's first indication that the initial LOI burn had been successful. Many of the features on the desolate far side were unnamed, but now that Apollo 11 was coasting across the near side the crew were passing over more familiar ground. For months, Neil and Buzz had been studying photos of distinctive landmarks they would look out for during critical phases of the descent. Features of the Moon were identified, in Latin, according to rules set out by the International Astronomical Union in 1961. The plains, traditionally described as oceans and seas, were named after states of mind, such as the Sea of Tranquility and the Sea of Crisis. The highlands were named after mountain ranges on Earth, and craters recalled eminent scientists, while some of the smaller features were informally named by the two previous Apollo missions.47
Armstrong: 'Apollo 11 is getting its first view of the landing approach. This time we are going over the Taruntius crater, and the pictures and maps brought back by Apollo 8 and 10 have given us a very good preview of what to look at here. It looks very much like the pictures, but like the difference between watching a real football game and watching it on TV. There's no substitute for actually being here.'
Soaring 127 miles above the surface, the feature Neil particularly wanted to see was the landing ground. Eleven miles long and three wide, it was still officially identified as ALS-2, but the astronauts had come to refer to it using the baseball term 'home plate'. Half the Moon was bathed in sunshine, but for the moment the landing site lay just beyond the terminator, the line dividing sunlight and darkness. Dawn would not reveal it until the following day. Until then Armstrong would have to content himself with studying the approach route, including the hill Jim Lovell had named after his wife.
Aldrin: 'We're going over Mount Marilyn at the present time, and its ignition point.'
Mission Control: 'Roger. Thank you. And our preliminary tracking data for the first few minutes shows you in a 61.6 by 169.5 orbit. Over.'
Aldrin: 'Roger.'
Mission Control: 'And Jim is smiling.'
Armstrong: 'Currently going over Maskelyne. And Boot Hill, Duke Island, Sidewinder, looking at Maskelyne-W, that's the yaw round checkpoint. Just coming into the terminator.'
And with that, the crew flew back into the Moon's shadow, knowing that somewhere down in the darkness ALS-2 was awaiting them.
While coasting through dark skies, at around 1.50pm they tried to answer questions about the surface until Neil reminded Mission Control that they were tucking into lunch. He wanted to focus on the next major task on the flight-plan, the second lunar orbit insertion burn, but he knew Houston had other ideas.
Mission Control: 'We'd like to know if you're still planning to have the TV up with the beginning of the next pass. Over.'
Armstrong: 'Roger, Houston. We'll try to have it ready.'
Mission Control: 'This is Houston. We are inquiring if it is your plan to. Over.'
Armstrong: 'It never was our plan to; but it's in the flightplan, so I guess we'll do it.'
Mission Control: 'Houston. Roger. Out.'
While passing behind the far side for the second time, the astronauts set up what Neil once referred to as the 'camera claptrap'. There hadn't been time on the ground to practise using it. 'Neil and Buzz didn't even know how to turn it on or focus it,' Collins recalled, 'and my knowledge of it was pretty sketchy.' Having had a chance to play around with the equipment on the way to the Moon, they were now a little better prepared to start filming the surface. Nevertheless, Michael was mindful of advice he had been given, reminding him that there would be a billion people watching, 'so don't screw it up'.48
By the time they swung back into radio contact they were already broadcasting TV pictures. For the first time during the mission, the lunar surface – which for so long had been preoccupying so many minds – suddenly became clearly visible to those on the ground. Impressed by the quality of the images, Bruce McCandless told the crew that Houston was receiving a beautiful colour picture of the Moon's horizon, capped by the empty blackness of space.
Now 92 miles above the hills of Smyth's Sea, Neil, Buzz and Michael once again looked for the approach to the landing site. Collins had noticed that the LM (still docked with the command module) had a tendency to sink down towards the surface and he put this down to the effect of the mysterious mascons. While Buzz described the craters passing beneath them, Mike asked the flight controllers to watch the telemetry so that they could see the effect for themselves.
Travelling east to west, nearly 26 minutes after resuming contact with the ground the spacecraft passed over the triangular shape of Mount Marilyn for the second time. Apollo 11's elliptical orbit meant its altitude was changing all the time, and as they continued towards the landing site the crew were now around 150 miles above the surface.
Aldrin: 'The largest of the craters near the centre of the picture right now is Maskelyne-W. This is a position check during descent at about 3 minutes and 39 seconds, and it's our downrange position check and cross-range position check prior to yawing over face-up to acquire the landing radar. Past this point, we would be unable to see the surface below us until getting very near the landing area.'
Mission Control: 'Roger. I imagine you'll get a real good look at that tomorrow afternoon.'
Then once more the crew plunged back into darkness, the Sun setting in the east behind them.
Switching off the camera, they were now able to focus on LOI-2 – the second lunar orbit insertion burn. This was designed to exchange Apollo 11's elliptical path around the Moon for a more circular orbit. The previous two lunar missions had tried to reach as circular an orbit as possible, only to find that the mascons later pulled them out of position. Apollo 11's burn would take the orbital wobbles into account, allowing them to pull the spacecraft gradually back into a precise orbital path.
After McCandless read up the data they would use to get home if the 17-second burn did not go to plan, Collins completed a P52 exercise to check their position. They then lost contact with Houston at the start of their third orbit. Collins put the spacecraft in the correct attitude to be able to begin the burn, which once again would take place on the far side, beyond assistance from Houston. Again the engine had to fire precisel
y on time, at 80 hours, 11 minutes and 36 seconds into the mission. It could not be allowed to continue for a second longer than scheduled or else 'we'd be on an impact course with the other side of the Moon', as Buzz put it.49 Once Michael was ready, at 4.43pm he allowed the burn to begin. The engine started smoothly and the manoeuvre successfully put the spacecraft in a near circular orbit roughly 60 miles above the Moon. Now travelling at a little over 3,600mph, it would complete one circuit every two hours. Michael would stay on this track for the remainder of his time in lunar orbit, and would not fire the engine again until he was ready to begin the journey home.
After making radio contact, the crew let Mission Control know that LOI-2 had gone to plan. In the hours before they went to bed their final task of the day was to prepare for the landing, due to take place the following afternoon. Equipment needed to be transferred into the lunar module which meant that once again they had to open the hatch and remove the docking mechanism. As Buzz began carrying supplies into the LM, he noticed that the terminator had crept back a fraction and that for the first time the landing site was softly emerging from the darkness. He found himself looking down on what he considered to be a beautiful landscape, and he urged Neil and Michael to look for themselves. The area was still streaked by long shadows, and privately Michael thought he couldn't see anywhere smooth enough 'to park a baby buggy, never mind a lunar module'.50 Even Buzz admitted the whole region looked eerie.
Following a suggestion by Michael, they agreed to stow the docking mechanism in the cabin, rather than secure it back in position. 'I'd rather sleep with the probe and drogue than have to dick with it in the morning,' he said. Replacing the command module hatch, he began to prepare dinner. Meanwhile, Buzz quietly ran through the many procedures they would be following in the morning, leaving Neil to his own thoughts. Procedures could be followed from checklists but some things were left to Armstrong's personal preference, including the first words he would say on the surface.
En route to the Moon, Michael and Buzz had asked Neil what he might say.51 They were not alone in their curiosity. In late June, George Low, the Apollo programme manager, had asked Armstrong whether he had thought about his choice of words. Neil had replied, 'Sure, George, I've been thinking about it. Tell everybody thanks from all of us. We know how hard everybody's been working.'52
In Mission Control, Flight Director Cliff Charlesworth (centre) sits to the right of Gene Kranz.
Soon after arriving in orbit, the crew's faces filled with blood until their bodies adjusted to weightlessness.
Buzz Aldrin in the lunar module, photographed by Neil Armstrong during the long journey to the moon.
The lunar module, Eagle, after undocking from the command module. The long rods under the landing pads are lunar surface sensing probes.
The television image that millions around the world were waiting for on July 20th 1969. Armstrong steps off the ladder on to the lunar surface.
Aldrin prepares to step on to the lunar surface.
Buzz Aldrin, in Armstrong's iconic picture of man on the Moon.
Aldrin beside the US flag. The footprints of the astronauts are clearly visible in the soil of the Moon.
One small step ... Buzz Aldrin's bootprint.
Buzz Aldrin and, to his right, the Solar Wind Composition experiment.
A relieved Armstrong back in the LM after the moonwalk.
Buzz's position on the right-hand side of the lunar module cabin. In the window is a 16mm film camera.
Lt. Clancy Hatleberg closes the spacecraft hatch while the crew await rescue. Leaving Columbia Aldrin said he was struck by a 'peculiar sense of loss'.
Officials join the flight controllers in celebrating the return of Apollo 11. Third from left (foreground) is Chris Kraft, fourth is George Low and fifth is Bob Gilruth.
President Nixon welcomes the astronauts aboard the USS Hornet. The crew are already confined to the Mobile Quarantine Facility, MQF).
Inside the quarantine facility.
New York City welcomes the three astronauts, in a shower of ticker tape.
Chapter 11
A PLACE IN HISTORY
On 10 July 1969, Frank Borman returned from an official goodwill trip to Russia. Three days later he was still briefing senior politicians in Washington when Chris Kraft urged him to find out what he could about the Luna 15 mission. Borman consulted the National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, before using the infamous White House hotline to call the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The following day, telegrams detailing the probe's trajectory and promising that radio interference would not be a problem were sent to the White House and to Borman's home in Houston.1 In a rare moment of co-operation, the two superpowers were brought a hair's width closer through a spirit of unity fostered by the leaders of their respective space programmes. In space at least, if not elsewhere, the Cold War was showing signs of a thaw.
An atmosphere of mutual respect between astronauts and cosmonauts developed in rare meetings at international air shows. In May 1967, Michael Collins was asked by NASA to attend the Paris Air Show, along with Dave Scott. Besieged by photographers, autograph hunters, security men and tourists, they sat down with cosmonauts Pavel Belyaev and Konstantin Feoktistov. But the formalities evaporated when everyone retreated to the privacy of the Russians' airliner and opened the vodka. The Russians insisted they had no plans for a manned landing on the Moon but admitted that cosmonauts were training to fly helicopters, leading Collins to suspect that secretly their lunar ambitions were far from over.
Compared to NASA's open way of doing things, Collins considered the Russian space programme to be 'hidden from view, secret and mysterious'.2 This was a widely held opinion. The Russians never announced flights in advance and disasters were always concealed. News of the loss of cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko, during a training accident in 1961, did not emerge until the 1980s.3 Worse, many in NASA believed the Russian space programme to be tinged with a nasty communist way of doing things, including ordering cosmonauts to undertake risky ventures simply to beat the Americans in achieving key objectives. The Russians might have put the first man in space, and the first woman, and carried out the first EVA, but some in NASA wondered just how much risk they were accepting along the way. There were indeed occasions when cosmonauts were sent on missions against their better judgement. Unknown to NASA, Vladimir Komarov had raised concerns about the many technical problems with Soyuz 1, before it claimed his life in April 1967.4 Yet the fact that the Russians were sometimes getting ahead of themselves, and consequently taking unnecessary risks, did not prove that NASA occupied the moral high ground. It was the Americans who had publicly set a deadline, forcing developments to move forward so quickly that while the Russians lost one man during a mission NASA lost three on the ground. A month after Komarov died, Collins, Scott, Belyaev and Feoktistov drank to an end to accidents.
By 1968, the CIA was warning NASA's leadership of a giant rocket being secretly built by the Russians.5 It appeared that Moscow was preparing to send men to the Moon, in an attempt to beat the Americans once again and steal the ultimate prize laid down by Kennedy. In fact Kennedy, as we have seen, had invited Khrushchev to take part in a joint expedition to the lunar surface. Although the Russians were receptive to the president's UN speech, they were never to find out what he had in mind.6 After Kennedy's assassination Khrushchev was persuaded to go it alone, and he secretly set in motion the necessary preparations – as Collins had suspected. A top priority was a powerful rocket to rival the Saturn V, and by February 1969 the Russians were ready to test their N-1 booster. Although big enough to impress the CIA, the N-1 lacked the Saturn's reliability and exploded just over a minute into its flight. On 3 July, just two weeks before the launch of Apollo 11, a second N-1 blew up, the huge explosion destroying its launch-pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and bringing an end to any realistic hope of a Russian manned mission to the Moon. No announcement was made of the disaster and the world did not learn of it for some m
onths to come.7
In the struggle for ideological supremacy, America made much of its self-appointed role as the guardian of freedom and democracy. In this spirit, NASA claimed that unlike the menacing Russians it was freely allowing the world to see every triumph and tragedy. In 1957, Vanguard TV3 was set to become America's first satellite. But when it got no further than four feet from the ground, TV networks were allowed to continue their live footage of the unfolding disaster. Similarly, in January 1967, news of the Apollo 1 fire was quickly passed to the press. This policy of making the agency publicly available was to have far-reaching consequences for many of its personnel and their families. Unlike their Russian counterparts, who largely remained anonymous, America's astronauts were living in a country where Hollywood and rock 'n' roll created new heroes every week. Alongside movie stars and music legends, spacemen were offered up to an admiring public by reporters who described them as dashing adventurers. Astronauts were the real-life embodiment of the space-travelling supermen of science fiction, the type of guys who would readily throw you a smile and a salute on their way to ridding exciting new worlds of bug-eyed monsters. The public didn't care about orbital mechanics and P52 platform alignments, they wanted to know what astronauts had for breakfast. Some liked the attention. Others, among them Neil Armstrong, enjoyed press adulation as much as engine failure and considered this aspect of the job a necessary evil.
There was a feeling within NASA that, as a government agency spending billions of public dollars, the public were owed something in return. This led to astronauts being despatched to dinners and local functions across the country. Before his Gemini mission, Michael Collins was sent to a Boy Scouts event in Ohio. He always found such PR work difficult, but on that occasion his dismay was outweighed by the Boy Scouts' own disappointment after they discovered he had not yet flown in space. 'Aren't any of the real astronauts coming?' one of them wanted to know.8 Once in training for a flight, the men were spared such duties.