Moon landing: 11 questions and answers on the Apollo mission

On July 20, 1969 — exactly 50 years ago today— humans did what had never been done before: set foot on another celestial body.

It's one of mankind's single greatest achievements. For starters, the Moon is 384,403 kilometres away. Till then, no man had ever set foot there.

It was a colossal project. Massive advances in flight science were required — in a relatively short time. There were many unknowns: prolonged weightlessness, radiation, docking and meteoroid hazard.

Giant rockets were needed. Every part had to be tested for reliability. The mission required razor-sharp precision in staging, handling, rendezvous, rocket propulsion. Everything looked impossible.

Until it became possible.

News of this great feat gripped the world.

What happened on July 20, 1969?

On this day, the Apollo lunar module, called Eagle, landed on the Moon's surface. Astronaut Neil Armstrong came out first. He walked on the lunar surface, upon which he uttered one of the most popular quotes of modern history: "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." He was the first man on the Moon.

Armstrong's colleague Buzz Aldrin followed him 19 minutes later. A third astronaut, Michael Collins, piloted the lunar Command and Service Module (CSM), called Columbia, orbiting some 60 miles (96.5km) above the Moon's surface.

The two — Armstrong and Aldrin — did their assigned tasks for about 21 hours on the lunar surface, during which Collins, on board the CSM, orbited the Moon 30 times.

Afterwards, the moon lander fired its ascent rocket to bring Armstrong and Aldin to a rendezvous and docking with SCM, for the journey back to Earth. The SCM splashed down in the Pacific four days later, on July 24, 1969.

It culminated years of work put together by about 300,000 people involved in the project.

About 650 million people watched the moment on TV. It was one of the most important moments in history.

Why did the Americans send manned missions to the Moon?

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched "Sputnik 1". It was the Earth's first artificial satellite.

On September 13, 1959, the Soviets' Luna 2 mission sent the first man-made object to the surface of the Moon. Then cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961. These events came as a big shock to the Americans.

A few days after Gagarin's feat, on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space — but Shepard only flew on a short sub-orbital flight instead of orbiting the Earth, as Gagarin had done.

President John F. Kennedy felt a massive pressure to respond: to have the US "catch up to and overtake" the Soviet Union in the "space race."

On May 25, 1961, Kennedy declared an ambitious goal — to send an American to the Moon and back safely before the end of the decade (1960s). 

In setting his sights on landing an American on the Moon, Kennedy was realistic. He declared the project was fraught with immense risks. Failure rate was high: Between 1958 to 1965, only three out of the 18 US uncrewed lunar missions succeeded, while two were only partially successful — a >80 per cent + failure rate.

But it was an era of space exploration.

Kennedy reiterated the challenge in subsequent speeches — thereby pumping up Nasa and the whole of America to prove their technological supremacy. The race with the Soviets was on.

How much was the total cost of the manned Moon landing programme?

$25.4 billion (from 1961 to 1973). The amount included the Projects Mercury (in its latter stages), Gemini and Apollo. This was the figure reported to the US Congres in 1973.

By far the most expensive parts of the mission were the Apollo spacecraft (the CSM, the Lunar Modules) and the monstrous Saturn V launch vehicles.

Altogether, the project cost is equivalent to $153 billion in 2018 dollars.

When did the Apollo 11 spacecraft leave the Earth, when did it land on the Moon, and when did the astronauts come back?

It took nine days — and the work of up to 300,000 people — to complete the Apollo 11 mission which landed the first man on the moon.

July 16, 1969: Apollo 11 crew lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on top of the massive Saturn V rocket.

July 20, 1969: The crew landed on the Moon.

July 24, 1969: Splashdown in the North Pacific Ocean, near Hawaii.

Who were the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission?

Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module "Eagle" on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC (12.17am on July 21, 1969 in the UAE). 

Six hours later, at on July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC, Armstrong stepped of the Eagle onto the lunar surface; Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. They spent about two hours and 15 minutes together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth.

Command module pilot Michael Collins flew the command module "Columbia" alone in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the Moon's surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21.5 hours on the lunar surface at a site they named "Tranquility Base" before rejoining Columbia in lunar orbit.

Neil Armstrong, born August 5, 1930; died August 25, 2012

Fighter jet pilot in Korea, X-15 test pilot, one of only two civilians selected for the second astronaut group in 1962, Gemini 8 command pilot, backup commander of Apollo 8 and, finally, commander of Apollo 11. In 1966, three years before the Apollo 11 mission, he had to gain control of his tumbling Gemini 8 spacecraft and brought it down early. (Project Gemini was Nasa's second human spaceflight programme, conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo). The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Armstrong had ejected from a lunar lander training device in 1968 just before it crashed in a fireball in Texas. Armstrong died on August 25, 2012 after complications from heart surgery, at age 82.

Michael Collins, born October 31, 1930

Michael Collins was an X-15 test pilot before he became an astronaut. Selected as part of the third group of 14 astronauts in 1963, he flew into space twice. The first was on Gemini 10, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two different spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as "spacewalks"). His second spaceflight was as command module Pilot for Apollo 11. He stayed in orbit around the Moon, which he orbited 30 times. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left in the Apollo Lunar Module "Eagle" to make the first crewed landing on its surface.

Collins is one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon. He was the seventeenth American in space, the fourth person (and third American) to perform a spacewalk, the first person to have performed more than one spacewalk. Collins was the second person to orbit the Moon alone. He retired as a major general of the US Air Force Reserves.

Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr.; born January 20, 1930

Aldrin is an American engineer, astronaut and fighter pilot. As the Apollo Lunar Module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission, he and mission commander Neil Armstrong were the first two humans to land on the Moon.

Aldrin graduated third in his US Military Academy at West Point Class 1951, with a degree in mechanical engineering.

He was commissioned into the US Air Force, and served as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. Before he became an astronaut, he clocked in 2,500 hours of flying time, of which 2,200 was in jets.

He flew 66 combat missions, shot down two MiG-15 aircraft. From 1956 to 1959 he flew F-100 Super Sabres equipped with nuclear weapons as a flight commander in the 22nd Fighter Squadron, 36th Fighter Wing. He earned a doctorate degree in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Selected as a member of Nasa's Astronaut Group 3, this made him the first astronaut with a doctoral degree. His doctoral thesis was "Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous", earning him the nickname "Dr. Rendezvous" from fellow astronauts.

His first space flight was in 1966 on Gemini 12 during which he spent over five hours on extravehicular activity. Three years later, Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on July 21, 1969 (UTC), 19 minutes after Armstrong first touched the surface.

6. What did the pre-Apollo missions do?

There were two US manned spaceflight projects before Apollo: Mercury and Gemini. When President Kennedy announced in 1961 America's aim to put a man on the Moon, Project Mercury (America's first human spaceflight programme) was already underway.

On April 9, 1959, Nasa introduced the "Mercury Seven" (photo below), focussing on initial objectives needed to get to the moon. From 1959-1964, Project Mercury proved human spaceflight was possible. During that period, six human-tended flights and eight automated flights were completed.

Project Gemini, tested the skills Nasa needed to go to the Moon, and had four main goals:

Gemini followed from 1965 and 1966. Ten Gemini crews flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions, placing the US ahead of the Soviets. Gemini's aim was to develop space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon. The Gemini missions had a mixed record: an epic fail of Gemini 4 rendezvous; successful crewed rendezvous (between Gemini 6A-7), and an unsuccessful gravity-gradient stabilization test (Gemini 11).

Astronauts on Gemini 9 and 11 had suffered from fatigue carrying out tasks during extra-vehicular activity (EVA, or spacewalk). Michael Collins, though, had a successful EVA on Gemini 10, suggested that the order in which he had performed his EVA tasks was an key factor.

The Apollo 11 mission itself was wrought with many risks. Would they make it to the Moon? And if they do, what bacteria would they bring back to Earth — if they're able to make the homeward bound trip at all?

It was a complex procedure that required precision planning and impeccable execution. If the ascent rocket that took the astronauts from the Moon back to the Columbia orbiter malfunctioned — or didn't fire — both Armstrong and Aldrin would have died on the Moon from starvation and oxygen.

What rockets were used in the Apollo missions?

The Apollo spacecraft were launched on top of the massive Saturn V rocket. Until now, Saturn V remains the biggest rocket ever built by man.

The Saturn V was made of three stages. The first two stages used up their fuel reaching orbit. The third stage was used to push the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module to the moon. The Apollo programme, however, used four types of launch vehicles.

Saturn V, was by far the tallest (363 feet, about 1/7th the height of Burj Khalifa) and most powerful rocket system ever. It burnt some 20 tonnes of fuel per second at launch. Propellant accounted for 85% of its overall weight.

It was the only one that helped carry humans beyond Earth's orbit. It was used for both uncrewed and crewed earth orbit and lunar missions. The Marshall Space Flight Center designed the Saturn rockets.

The same rockets were also used for an Apollo Applications Program, which sent the Skylab, a space station that supported three crewed missions from 1973 through 1974, and the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, a joint Earth orbit mission with the Soviet Union in 1975.

What did the other Apollo missions do? And what really happened to Apollo 13?

The Apollo project ran from 1961 to 1972. A major setback was the 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the entire crew during a pre-launch test. Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to orbit another celestial body.

Out of the planned 10 Moon landings, only six crewed US landings (between 1969 and 1972) were carried out. Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. Five of the six missions achieved successful landings.

The final mission, Apollo 17 (from December 7-19, 1972), marked the sixth Moon landing.

An oxygen tank explosion which damaged the CSM's propulsion and life support while in transit to the Moon prevented the Apollo 13 Moon landing. The crew returned to Earth safely by using the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat".

How did the Apollo 11 mission unfold?

It was a delicate dance — between man, machine and celestrial bodies. Strapped on top of the masive Saturn family of rockets, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre on July 16 and traveled for four days, stayed there fore 21 hours, and went on return journey.

The Saturn V had three stages:

After the third stage travelled for about 40 minutes — while going at 40,320 km/h — the command and service module (CSM, "Columbia") performed a delicate 180-degree turn.

This is a complicated manoeuvre: Docking the CSM with lunar module (called "Eagle"), while in zooming in outer space at 14.7 times the speed of a bullet (average bullet travels at around 1,700 mph or 2,435.9 km/h).

Then both Columbia and Eagle, now in a Moon-ready position, hurtled towards the Moon. Three days later they reached lunar orbit and separated.

Collins remained in the CSM/Columbia orbitting at 6,000km/h about 60 miles above the Moon's surface, or 30x over a period of 21 hours.

"Eagle", piloted by Armstrong, entered the lunar atmosphere, and controlled the fall by firing the descent (retro) rocket for a soft landing. Armstrong and Aldrin stayed for 21 hours to do a long checklist of tasks. Then they fired the ascent rocket for a rendezvous with CSM overhead. Together, the three astronauts flew back to Earth.

The total distance covered by the command module was 952,700 miles. The Apollo program returned 842 pounds (382 kg) of lunar rocks and soil to Earth, giving a greater understanding of the Moon's composition and geological history.

Many advances were achieved as a result of the Apollo project. These were related to rocketry, crewed spaceflight, avionics, telecommunications and computers.

The Apollo project set major milestones. For the first time, it sent crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO); Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon, while the final Apollo 17 mission marked the sixth Moon landing.

How many more Apollo missions landed astronauts on the Moon?

Six missions landed men on the Moon, beginning with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969; five more Apollo missions followed — the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, 12 men walked on the Moon.

Conspiracy theories: Was there really a Moon landing?

To this day, 50 years later, many still believe the Moon landings didn't happen. Millions of people across the world believe it was the first big "fake news". They believe no one has ever walked on the Moon, and that the images that Nasa broadcast in July 1969 were shot in a Hollywood studio.

Thousands of Internet sites are devoted to "proving" that the landings never happened. Conspiracy theories live on regardless of proof, seen even years later. For example, in 2009, the Lunar Orbiter showed the abandoned modules from Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17 still on the Moon's surface.

And the sheer number of people who worked on this massive project — 300,000 — makes it impossible to fake.

Thousands of Internet sites are devoted to "proving" that the landings never happened. Conspiracy theories live on regardless of proof — the abandoned modules from Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17 still on the Moon's surface.

Return to the moon

In late 2018, US President Donald Trump directed Nasa to “lead the return of humans to the moon”. For most folks, the meaning of this was pretty clear: Americans would soon walk on the moon again.

Here's how it may happen — in just three discreet phases.

First: Deliver cargo to the lunar surface and initiate robotic construction.

Second: Land crew on the base, complete construction and develop local resources.

Third: Establish long-term habitation and exploration.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy booster (owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk), which can launch 60 tonnes to Earth orbit and 10 tonnes to the moon, could easily handle the first phase.

Nasa’s Space Launch System, still in development, might eventually be used along with heavy lift rockets such as Blue Origin’s (owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) New Glenn and the Vulcan rocket of United Launch Alliance (owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin).

This would allow Nasa to immediately go straight to the surface of the moon and set up shop.

In Pictures: Apollo 11's iconic moon landing

Christian Borbon, Web Producer

The Apollo 11 crew consisted of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins

How the Moon inspired centuries of storytellers

PARIS (AFP): By landing on the Moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin arrived at a place which, up until that point, had been the stuff of fantasy.

But even after they transformed fantasy into fact, it is a place that continues to capture the imagination of storytellers, as it has for centuries.

Literature, novels, cinema... from antiquity to the present, the Moon has been the object of any number of imaginary expeditions.

As far back as the second century BC, the satirist Lucian of Samosata, in "True Stories", imagined a voyage to the Moon that saw the author and his fellow travellers find the King of the Moon caught up in a war with the King of the Sun.

In the 17th century, French writer Cyrano de Bergerac - the real one, not the character in Edmond Rostand's famous play - wrote a tale titled "The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon".

Baron Munchausen travelled to the Moon in a flying boat in German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe's 1785 fantasy.

And the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler imagined demons on the Moon in his story titled "The Dream".

In more modern times, science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells imagined a sophisticated race of insect-like creatures living below the satellite's surface in "The First Men on the Moon".

Wells's adventurers reached the Moon using a substance that negated the forces of gravity.

Verne, in his 1865 tale "From the Earth the Moon", was a little less fanciful, shooting his travellers across space in a giant cannon.

A century or so later Armstrong, travelling back from the Moon, referred to Verne's tale in one of his television broadcasts.

More recently still, one of Herge's 1950s Tintin adventures featured a visit to the Moon - and even Snowy, his loyal dog, got a spacesuit.

Changing face of the Moon

Cinema versions of the Moon have been equally fanciful. George Melies extraordinary 1902 work "A Trip to the Moon", the travellers find giant mushrooms and excitable natives.

He follows Verne with a cannon-propelled space capsule - and a splashdown at sea on their return.

As technology brought the possibility of a lunar flight closer, that seemed to dampen the market for the more fanciful lunar tales.

Classic sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein still used the Moon as the setting for his 1966 novel "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress".

But by this time, humans inhabit it - and Heinlein's tale is about the revolt of the lunar colony against rule from Earth.

And just a year before the real Moon landings, Stanley Kubrick's epic 1968 film "2001" has astronauts at an outpost on the Moon finding a mysterious obelisk there.

Here, as in Clarke's original story, the Moon has become little more than the stage for something far more important.

Perhaps what the 1969 Apollo mission to the Moon did was not so much end the telling of tales about the satellite as change the kind of stories being told.

After the Apollo landings, the Moon became a focus for pop culture.

The heroes of the achingly kitsch 1970s science fiction television series "Space 1999" are based on the Moon - and have to cope with a nuclear accident that knocks it out of orbit and sends them hurtling into space.

The Moon also featured in any number of comic-book adventures and cartoon series from the 1970s onwards.

David Bowie released his Kubrick-inspired classic 1969 single "Space Oddity" the same month as the Moon landings.

A generation later, in the 2013 version, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield played his cover version of the song from the International Space Station.

And in 2009 Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, broke into the cinema mainstream with his cult hit - sci-fi puzzler "Moon".

Small step, giant memories: Neil Armstrong's moonwalk remembered

Half a century has passed — but the moment Moon pioneer Neil Armstrong took his historic first step on the lunar surface is etched in the memories of those who tuned in.

The grainy pictures coming back on the night of July 20, 1969, from a quarter of a million miles away fascinated viewers young and old.

AFP spoke to some, who recalled their joy and emotion, including Dafydd Williams, now a Canadian astronaut with NASA who has twice been into space — in 1998 and 2007 but who was a schoolboy back then.

Dafydd R. (Dave) Williams

"It was a pretty remarkable day. The sixties was this decade of exploration and the highlight of the decade was humans walking on the surface of the Moon.

"If you were alive at that time, everybody remembers where they were.

"I was fifteen years old at the time, at home watching it with my family glued to the television set, which was black and white because we didn't have money to afford a colour TV.

"It changed the course of history and for me it demonstrated the fact that the seemingly impossible is actually possible.

"Watching NASA going from never having flown humans in space in 1960 to have humans walking on the surface of the Moon in 1969... what an incredible decade!"

Jackie Stewart

Formula One champion Stewart was a friend of Armstrong and also of Eugene Cernan, the last man to date to walk on the Moon in December 1972.

"I was in the Playboy Club in New York with Roman Polanski and my wife Helen. I knew a lot of the astronauts because they were coming to see Formula One and Indycar races. I was blown away by what I was seeing," said Stewart, who with his son Mark produced a 2014 documentary, "Last Man on the Moon."

Brigitte Bardot

"I was in Normandy on that night of July 20-21,1969. I was shooting the Bear and the Doll," recalled the French screen icon.

"I watched this miracle without really believing it, it was so extraordinary, unachievable - and yet they did it.

"Human genius can reach the divine."

Claudia Cardinale

The Italian actress, then aged 31, has hazy memories of exactly where she was when she saw the broadcast.

But "a few months later, Neil Armstrong, who was an amateur trumpeter, dropped by for a house party (in the Rome countryside), invited by Franco Cristaldi," Cardinale's first husband.

"My brothers accompanied. We'd hired two trumpets - one got bent by Neil in a state of inebriated joy."

Pierre Cardin

"I was on the Champs-Elysees, with thousands of people, waiting for the dream to become reality," said the fashion designer, then 47, now 96.

"When Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon I felt an immense satisfaction. We were all awaiting news and this triumph was greeted with a shriek of joy shared by the thousands of people around me.

"Nobody believed (it could happen) a few years earlier but I always was sure it would come to pass. It was a great leap forward for humanity," said Cardin, who later would meet Armstrong and mission colleague Buzz Aldrin.

Bertrand Piccard

The Swiss psychiatrist and aviator was 11 at the time and recalled how "I was lucky enough to be invited to Cape Kennedy to watch the rocket take off on July 16 as my father worked for NASA.

"On July 20, I was at a restaurant with my family at Palm Beach, Florida, when a NASA official tipped off my mother that we had to hurry up and get back as the astronauts leaving (the module) had been brought forward two hours.

"We rushed home as quickly as we could. Shortly beforehand, my father had bought a television especially for the occasion.

"I remember the first step as if it were yesterday. I had the impression I was watching the most important event in the history of humanity. I still think so...

Boris Volynov

Volynov was a 34-year-old Russian cosmonaut who saw his country, after taking an early lead in the space race, beaten to the Moon by the Americans.

"Of course we felt a certain rancour as we had our own Moon programme. I was myself in training to walk in lunar gravitation conditions. We had all dreamed of one day walking on the Moon," said Volynov, who flew on two Soyuz missions.

"We feared the Americans were getting ahead of us as our programme was losing momentum," said Volynov, adding that two competing Russian programmes meant that "we ended up being overtaken."

He later met Armstrong.

"We quickly became friends, communicating via a Soviet translator. The pictures of us saluting one another were only declassified after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Alain Prost

French four-time Formula One champion Prost was just 14 when Armstrong made his great leap but "it's one of those memories which always stay with you.

"My parents had a little studio at Cannes and we were on holiday. I still recall that day so clearly - I remember looking at the TV and the Moon simultaneously and saying to myself 'what's going on?'

"It's a crazy memory -- you felt something is happening. At the time we thought it was totally impossible."

Jean-Michel Jarre

The composer of electronic music watched the broadcast live and recalls "celebrating the era when we had a vision and an appetite for the future - it was an absolute inspiration for musicians, filmmakers and writers. Pop culture was born at the same time as the beginning of the conquest of space."