Man on the Moon

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong, when he set foot on the Moon. This historic landing took place on July 20, 1969. Watch this video for 10 facts about the iconic milestone.

The race for supremacy in space between the USSR and the U.S. began as early as the mid-1950s. On September 12, 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech before a crowd of about 40,000 people at the Rice University football stadium in Houston, Texas. “We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Apollo 11, the American space flight, landed humans on the Moon for the first time. Commander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin and pilot Michael Collins landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969 at 20:17 UTC (Coordinated United Time).

Six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56 UTC, Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon’s surface. Nineteen minutes later, he was joined by Aldrin. The two spent more than two hours exploring the site which they had named Tranquility Base when they landed. They collected 21.5 kg of lunar material to bring back to Earth.

Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida. It was the fifth crewed mission of NASA’s Apollo programme. The spacecraft had three parts: a command module (CM), with a cabin for the three astronauts, the only part that returned to Earth; a service module (SM) which supported the command module with propulsion, electric power, oxygen and water; and a lunar module (LM) that had a descent stage for landing on the Moon and an ascent stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit.

The astronauts separated the spacecraft from Saturn V’s third stage and travelled for three days to enter the lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into Eagle (the spacecraft that served as the crewed lunar lander of Apollo 11 and named after the bald eagle, which was featured prominently on the mission insignia) and landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20.

The astronauts used the ascent stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They returned to earth and splashed down (the method of landing a spacecraft by parachute in a body of water) in the Pacific Ocean on July 24.