On the morning of July 16, 1969, Neil and his two fellow Apollo 11 crewmen rose at 4:15 A.M. They had steak and eggs for breakfast, the same breakfast all astronauts had before a flight. The night before a special visitor had arrived for dinner to wish them good luck—Charles Lindbergh.
Once the astronauts were in their bulky space suits and helmets, an elevator on the launchpad took them up, past the Saturn rocket, to the space capsule, Columbia.
The countdown for Apollo 11 had started days ago. Now there were only a few minutes left until the launch. Launch control in Florida was responsible only for the very beginning of the flight. Once the craft cleared the launch tower, the NASA team in Houston would take over.
It was the last seconds of the countdown.
Six . . . five . . . four . . .
It seemed as if everyone watching held their breath.
Three . . . two . . . one . . .
Blastoff.
Trailing fire, the Saturn rocket with the astronauts inside the Columbia capsule soared into the sky. The entire cabin was rattling. But after just a few minutes, the ride grew smooth.
The Saturn V was a three-stage rocket engine. Three engines were needed because it wasn’t possible to build a single engine with enough power to take the craft a quarter of a million miles away.
Fuel in the Saturn’s first-stage engine propelled the rocket forty miles into the air. When its fuel was all used up, the first stage dropped off. At this point the second-stage engine kicked in. This took Apollo 11 one hundred and fifteen miles above Earth.
Now the astronauts were circling Earth. After one and a half orbits, the second stage fell off and the third-stage engines fired. This sped up the Apollo so that it could escape Earth’s gravity and continue toward the moon.
So far it had been a smooth and uneventful trip.
On the fourth morning, Columbia entered the moon’s gravity. From this point on, every step in the mission was being done for the very first time.
After breakfast on July 20, Neil and Buzz floated from Columbia into the landing module, which Neil had named the Eagle.
“See you later,” Michael Collins said to them right before the Eagle separated from Columbia.
One and a half hours later, it was time for the Eagle to touch down on the moon.
The Eagle had to land perfectly. That meant touching down on a flat area; otherwise the Eagle would not be able to take off from the moon and rejoin Columbia. Neil and Buzz would be left stranded on the moon forever.
The landing was supposed to be controlled by computers. But as the Eagle got close to the moon’s surface, Neil saw that the landing area was much too rocky.
Quickly he took the controls and looked for a safer spot. With less than a minute’s worth of fuel left, he spotted a good area four and a half miles away. Then the four bug-like legs of the landing vehicle made contact with the dusty surface of the moon.
“The Eagle has landed!” Neil told the NASA group in Houston. Now it was time to sightsee! |