Thread: Photos: Apollo’s Historic Lunar Landing

Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 moon landing by American astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins

In Houston, the screen in the Apollo mission control room showed the text of President John F. Kennedy's vow that Americans would walk on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Projected under it were the words, "Task Accomplished, July 1969."

It was the afternoon of July 20, and Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin had just sunk their feet into the gray lunar dust at the Eagle's landing site. They were some 240,000 miles from home, but more than half a billion earthlings were watching or listening as the two tried to adjust to the sights and airlessness of this mystical land. All around them, Mr. Aldrin said, was "magnificent desolation."

For more than two hours, the two took pictures, collected geologic samples and eventually succeeded in planting the American flag in the moon's inhospitable soil. Then they got home safely. These men -- and the hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers and managers who had made the moon landing possible -- had accomplished one of the most audacious missions in the annals of exploration. And exploration, as Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman once said, "is the essence of the human spirit."

Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Aldrin and a third astronaut, Michael Collins, had blasted out of Cape Kennedy four days earlier, orbited the Earth and moon, and then, for the first time in history, made a (barely) controlled landing on a lunar plain. They arrived, as Mr. Armstrong later pointed out, without weapons; the moon "looked friendly to me," Mr. Armstrong said, "and it proved to be friendly." They left a plaque that read, "We came in peace for all mankind."

The people of a moon-mad world, almost as one, breathed a sigh of relief and felt intoxicated by their own humanity. After Mr. Armstrong's small step and giant leap, it seemed possible that if man could walk on the moon, man could do anything.

There were always critics of the $25 billion "moondoggle." President Kennedy answered them in a 1962 speech at Rice University. "Many years ago," he said, "the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there.' Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there."

Another reason for President Kennedy's enthusiasm was that a Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, had orbited the earth in April 1961, the first man in space. In the mid-1960s, Congress was willing to spend $6 billion a year leapfrogging over the Soviet Union to the moon and maybe even Mars.

But the public wasn't convinced: One month before Apollo 11 launched, an opinion poll found that 56% of respondents didn't want their tax dollars used for a space program. (Several years earlier, when Congress complained about the cost of getting a man to the moon, Lyndon Johnson noted that in 1962, America "bet more on horse racing than on space.") But the Vietnam War, antipoverty programs and a recession made lunar exploration a luxury -- the Apollo program, which had put 12 men on the moon, ended in December 1972.

Mr. Armstrong, for one, didn't think the space program was dead. "We don't have the option any longer to say yes or no to it," he said. "We only have the option to say when." And in a 2001 interview, he counted himself among the luckiest men on Earth: "Looking back, we were really very privileged to live in that thin slice of history where we changed how man looks at himself, and what he might become and where he might go."

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy spoke before a joint session of Congress in Washington. During the address, Kennedy issued the challenge, “. . .I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”


The three Apollo 11 astronauts next to their spacecraft in 1969, from left to right: Col. Edwin E. Aldrin, lunar module pilot; Neil Armstrong, flight commander; and Lt. Michael Collins, command module pilot.


Rocco Petrone, director of launch operations at the space complex in Cape Kennedy, Fla., pointed out the spot on the moon the Apollo 11 astronauts were aiming for on July 12, 1969. Eight days later, Lunar Module “Eagle” touched down gently on the Sea of Tranquility on the east side of the moon.


The S-1C booster for the Apollo 11 Saturn V was erected atop its mobile launcher at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.


Technicians made the final adjustments to Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit as he prepared to take part in a test.


The Apollo 11 Saturn V space vehicle at twilight before launch, July 16, 1969.


The Apollo 11 flight crew were given instructions by technicians and management while undergoing training in preparation for the first manned landing on the Moon.


Two members of the Apollo 11 crew, along with a technician, crossed the access walkway on their way to board the mission’s command module, Cape Canaveral (then known as Cape Kennedy), Florida, July 16, 1969.


Personnel within the Launch Control Center watched the Apollo 11 lift off from Launch Complex 39A. The LCC is located 3.5 miles from the launch pad.


Swing arms moved away and a plume of flame signaled the liftoff of the Apollo 11.


Mr. Aldrin on the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, during which he became the second man to set foot on the moon.


A television screen grab showed the members of mission control waving flags and celebrating the splashdown and return of the Apollo 11 crew in Texas in July 1969.


The Apollo Command/Service Module stationed over the moon’s surface during the Apollo 11 mission, 20th July 1969.


TV news anchor Walter Cronkite kept his eyes on his monitor as NASA’s Apollo 11 mission touched down on the moon on July 20, 1969.


A photograph of a television screen showed the astronauts on the moon.


A footprint left by one of the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission showed in the soft, powder surface of the moon.


Astronaut Aldrin stood near a leg of the lunar module on the surface of the moon.


An unidentified Japanese family watched their TV screen as President Richard Nixon’s image was superimposed on a live TV broadcast of the Apollo 11 astronauts salute from the Moon.


Mr. Aldrin faced the camera as he walked on the moon.


With a half-earth in the background, the lunar module “Eagle,” carrying Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, approached the Apollo command module manned by Michael Collins after Messrs. Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon.


After splashdown of the capsule, a Navy para-rescue man and one of the three astronauts closed the spacecraft hatch as the other astronauts watched from the life raft at the completion of their successful mission. The space pilots donned biological isolation garments in their spacecraft.


Then-U.S. President Richard Nixon applauded the Apollo 11 astronauts, who were confined in a quarantine trailer.


A commemorative button for the Apollo 11 moon landing showed the mission’s crew; from left, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin.


New York City welcomed the Apollo 11 crew members in a showering of ticker tape down Broadway and Park Avenue on Aug. 13, 1969. The parade was termed the largest in the city’s history. Pictured in the lead car, from the left, are astronauts Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong.


An image of the earth rise was taken during a lunar orbit by the Apollo 11 mission crew in July 1969.