Apollo 11 Moon landing – we reveal exactly how the historic touchdown happened 50 years ago today
ON this day 50 years ago, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon.
Against all odds, the Apollo 11 space heroes stepped out onto the lunar surface and earned their places in history.
LAUNCH
Armstrong, Aldrin and fellow Apollo astronaut Michael Collins were launched on their historic mission by the giant Saturn V rocket, the brainchild of former Nazi rocket genius Wernher Von Braun.
An estimated one million people descended on the area around Cape Kennedy, Florida, to watch the rocket, which had the power of 85 Hoover Dams and was 65ft taller than the Statue of Liberty, blast off from Launchpad 39A.
ROCKET STAGING & COMMAND MODULE DOCKING WITH LUNAR MODULE
The rocket, which used enough fuel for a typical family car to drive nine million miles, had three stages. Each was discarded after serving its purpose.
The fragile lunar module, Eagle, was garaged safely inside the third stage, which fired Apollo out of Earth orbit.
Before setting off for the Moon, the command module, Columbia, turned around to pluck the smaller craft from the discarded third stage.
JOURNEY TO THE MOON
It took the spacecraft three days to reach the Moon.
Once in lunar orbit, Eagle separated from the command module, leaving Collins to orbit the Moon alone in the larger craft for 27 hours while Armstrong and Aldrin made their trip to the lunar surface.
LANDING
Only former test pilot Armstrong’s skill saved the landing from disaster.
He saw they were heading for a large crater and skimmed across the surface to find a safe spot, setting Eagle down with only 45 seconds of fuel remaining.
MOONWALK
There were no live TV pictures of the landing, but Armstrong deployed a camera housed in the side of the lunar module as he climbed down its ladder.
Hundreds of millions of people watched him step on to the surface and utter his famous first words.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent more than two hours walking on the Moon setting up scientific experiments and collecting two boxes worth of rocks and soil.
BLAST-OFF
Eagle had two sections – a descent stage and an ascent stage.
For blast-off, the descent stage acted as a makeshift launchpad.
Had Eagle’s engine failed to fire, Armstrong and Aldrin would have been doomed to die on the Moon once their oxygen supplies ran out.
Once back in lunar orbit, Eagle re-docked with Columbia and was then jettisoned into space before the astronauts headed for home.
RETURN JOURNEY & RE-ENTRY INTO EARTH ATMOSPHERE
The return journey took three days and the final moment of serious peril came when Columbia re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a velocity of 36,000 feet per second, enduring temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
SPLASHDOWN
US President Richard Nixon was on board the USS Hornet recovery ship to greet the astronauts after they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 950 miles from Hawaii.
From lift-off to splashdown, the mission lasted 195 hours, 17 minutes and 49 seconds… just 27 seconds longer than NASA had scheduled.
Because of fears they might accidentally bring back deadly lunar bugs, the astronauts were held in quarantine for nearly three weeks.
As they left quarantine on August 10, Buzz Aldrin told a crowd of well-wishers: "I need a little sun and a haircut."
Earlier this week, Nasa revealed stunning new panorama photos from Apollo missions to celebrate the 50th anniversary of humans landing on the Moon.
The Apollo 11 astronauts also had to cope with no toilet, and resorted to using bags taped to their bums.
Sadly, some people still thing the whole event we faked – we bust the most popular Apollo 11 Moon landing myths.
And here's why some people still think the Moon landings were faked 50 years later – and the man who started the ‘hoax’ theory.
Do you think space exploration is worthwhile? Let us know in the comments!
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