Apollo 11 Research Papers

First Man on the Moon “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong (history.com). In the late 1960’s, NASA chose three astronauts to take a spacecraft and be the first country to land on the moon. “The Apollo mission was meant to show the world that America was a strong country with advanced space technology knowledge,” (Garcia 14). Apollo 11 was the first successful lunar landing mission to land two humans on the moon. This was the start of a rapid accelerating pace of technology development. Buzz Aldrin is famous for being known as one of the three men that took part of the Apollo 11 mission where the first steps were taken on the moon. Aldrin was born on January 20, 1930, in Montclair, New Jersey
at the Kennedy Space Center, the Saturn V rocket fired up its huge engines and slowly, the whole 363-foot tall rocket ascended forty-two miles off earth’s surface in just two and a half minutes (Bodden 20). After seventy-six hours and traveling 240,000 miles, on July 19 Apollo 11 entered orbit. The next day at 1:46 p.m. the Eagle separated from the command module, the Columbia, where Collins stayed (history.com). Two hours and thirty-three minutes later the Eagle started it’s mission to the lunar surface (history.com). The Eagle is a smaller spacecraft that was connected to the Command Module Columbia (Garcia 16). Apollo 11 circled the moon twice before landing (Garcia 16). The lunar module approached the landing site “The Sea of Tranquility” the astronauts were worried that it wasn't safe to land the module there. With ninety-four seconds of fuel left Aldrin and Armstrong had to find a safe landing or they would have to return to the command module without landing on the moon (Zelon 24). At 4:17 p.m. the craft landed on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility with seventeen seconds of fuel to spare (Bodden 26). Armstrong radioed to mission control in Houston, Texas a famous message “The Eagle has landed,”