Fifty years ago, an anonymous note was placed on President Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery with the words “Mr President, The Eagle has landed”.
The note takes us back to May 25, 1961, when the young President John F. Kennedy, only weeks into his term, addressed a joint session of Congress where he announced various initiatives and challenged the nation, saying: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Apollo 11 was essentially a victory for the US in the space race against the USSR, which succeeded because of the political situation at the time.
The story begins in the 1950s when the Cold War between the world’s major superpowers was at its schizophrenic peak. Here were former World War II allies aiming large numbers of nuclear weapons at each other, making the world only the push of a button away from nuclear catastrophe.
On October 4, 1957, the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite into space aboard an intercontinental missile that was built to deliver atom bombs. It was a small, rudimentary satellite that orbited the Earth, but it had enormous consequences because many then began to doubt US supremacy over the USSR.
A few months later, an American satellite called Explorer 1 was launched. This was a lot smaller than Sputnik but it carried scientific instruments that detected the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts.
And this is where we come across Wernher von Braun, a German rocket engineer who developed the V2 rocket towards the end of the war. Von Braun was a brilliant engineer and a very capable organiser. He developed early US missiles and would go on to build the rocket that took man to the moon.
Kennedy was only 43 years old when he was inaugurated President in January 1961. He lit the expectations of the nation with prospects of radical reforms, but his first few months were tough.
The Russians launched Yuri Gagarin in orbit around the Earth on April 12, 1961. The first man in space was a Communist.
On April 17, a group of Cuban exiles backed by the CIA attacked Cuba and it went horribly wrong. The US launched Alan Shepard into space on May 5, 1961.
Badly in need of a boost, Kennedy asked his advisors if there was a major space project that the US could achieve before the USSR. His advisers suggested landing a man on the moon.
Kennedy had announced the space race and Nasa was tasked with forming the winning team that would accomplish this goal.
On September 12, 1962, Kennedy visited Houston to inaugurate new Nasa facilities and gave one of his best speeches. There he said: “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 which we intend to win.”
The view was one of ‘magnificent desolation’
On November 16, 1963, Kennedy visited Cape Canaveral for the last time. Sadly, he was assassinated less than a week later, on November 22, 1963.
Before Apollo, Nasa flew two types of spacecraft. These were the one-man Mercury and the two-man Gemini capsules. Step-by-step, Nasa learnt how to fly in space and tried out space walks, rendezvous between spacecraft and long flights.
Apollos 7, 9 and 10 were test flights and Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968. Nasa designated Apollo 11 to be the first lunar landing. The crew members were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Apollo 11 was composed of the Saturn V booster rocket and the Apollo spacecraft. The rocket booster provided the power to allow the spacecraft to reach a fast speed and escape Earth’s gravity, while the Apollo spacecraft was designed to support the astronauts to reach their destination and return safely to Earth.
The Apollo 11 spacecraft was composed of four modules. The command module, called Columbia, had a heatshield and parachutes to allow it to return to Earth by going through its atmosphere. The service module contained fuel and had a large rocket engine and consumables for the command module.
The lunar module was called Eagle and it was made up of two parts. Both parts landed on the moon but only the ascent stage part of the module took off from the moon by using the descent stage part as a platform.
Apollo 11 took off on July 16, 1969. The first two stages of the Saturn V were discarded before reaching orbit. The third stage took the Apollo spacecraft into orbit and it was fired once more to fly the Apollo spacecraft towards the moon. Then, as it entered the orbit of the moon, the spacecraft released the lunar module to land on the moon. This was definitely the trickiest part of the flight and was the stage in which problems occurred on Apollo 11.
Initially, there was a point when they were losing communication contact with Mission Control. The two astronauts were standing and wearing their bulky space suits in the cramped lunar module. Armstrong, who was the commander, was on the left. As the rocket motor fired and the lunar module was falling towards the surface of the moon, the computer showed a programme alarm which would be repeated no less than five times.
As they approached the planned landing site, Armstrong realised that they were heading for a dangerous area with a lot of large boulders. He took manual command and, with very little fuel remaining, landed in a safe place. After switching off the rocket motor, Armstrong called Mission Control to say: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed.”
Mission Control erupted into a frenzy and many cigars were smoked. They had done it; they had achieved Kennedy’s goal.
In the meantime, Collins continued orbiting the moon in Columbia, preparing it for when Eagle would take off and dock with the command and service module (CSM).
Armstrong will always be remembered for the hazy TV image of him stepping off a ladder onto the surface of the moon, saying: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Aldrin joined him a few minutes later, calling the view one of “magnificent desolation”.
The astronauts walked around, collected some rock specimens and set up experiments. The astronauts also set up an American flag and spoke to President Nixon. They unveiled a plaque on the lunar module that said: “We came in peace for all mankind.”
After the astronauts rested and prepared the ascent stage for lift-off from the moon, they faced a potential disaster. One of the switches to turn on the rocket motor had broken off but Aldrin solved this problem by inserting a pen into the switch. It worked. The rocket motor fired and the Eagle shot off the moon to join up with Collins in Columbia.
The astronauts then fired the SM motor again and they headed home for a successful landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Apollo 11 was followed by another six Apollo moon flights. Of these, Apollo 13 did not land on the moon because of an oxygen tank explosion. The last moon landing was of Apollo 17 in 1972.
With this, man had broken the chains of gravity that confined him to Earth, travelled a quarter of a million miles and set foot on the moon. This has been called man’s greatest adventure, and it was also a great achievement.
Gordon Caruana Dingli is a surgeon. He has had a keen interest in spaceflight for 50 years. He is writing a book on Apollo 11 and its impact on Malta. Readers are encouraged to send their stories about their experience watching the Apollo 11 landing to moon50malta@yahoo.com.
Malta salute
A small silicon disc carrying statements from Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and goodwill messages from the leaders of 73 nations was carried to the moon on Apollo 11. This is the message from Malta’s Prime Minister at the time, Giorgio Borg Olivier:
“On this unique and historic occasion when man first set foot on a planet outside his own, the people of Malta join the rest of the world in saluting the men whose courage and dedication, backed by the untiring efforts of scientists and countless collaborators, have made possible this new conquest in space and in the same way as Malta has advocated peace below the waters of the world, she fervently prays that peace shall continue to reign in the vastness of space beyond it.”