Everett Collection Historical /
鈥淭hat’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.鈥 On 21 July 1969, three days after taking off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words as he took his momentous 鈥渟mall step鈥 onto the lunar surface 鈥 with the then-largest tv audience in history, estimated at half a billion people, watching.
The probe had actually landed some six hours earlier, on 20 July. Following Armstrong 19 minutes later onto the lunar plain of the 鈥淪ea of Tranquility鈥 after the small step was Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. Completing the mission鈥檚 crew of three was Michael Collins, who remained alone circling the moon in the orbiter that had dispatched the landing module, codenamed Eagle. Hence Armstrong鈥檚 equally famous words on landing: 鈥淗ouston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.鈥
The landing, the fifth crewed mission in the Apollo series, was the culmination of the goal declared by president John F. Kennedy in 1961: that before the end of the decade, the US would land a man on the moon and return them safely to Earth. For a long time, it looked as if the Soviet Union would beat the US towards the ultimate victory in the space race.
Only a couple of weeks before, when the Soviet Union鈥檚 N1-L3 test vehicle toppled backwards in flames onto its launch pad, had it become clear that the US would make it to the moon first. Despite that race being driven by ideology not scientific research, and by nationalistic pride rather than the common purpose of humanity, it remains even five decades later arguably humanity鈥檚 finest technical achievement. Mick O鈥橦are
