Apollo 11

16 Jul 1969, 13:32:00 – 24 Jul 1969, 16:50:3526 items

spaceusa
Apollo 11

Launch to splashdown, to the second

On 16 July 1969 a Saturn V lifted three men off Pad 39A. Four days later Eagle set down on the Sea of Tranquility while its mothership circled overhead; four days after that all three came home to the Pacific.

The crew

  • Neil Armstrong, commander

  • Michael Collins, command module pilot, flying Columbia

  • Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, flying Eagle

By the numbers

  • 195 h 18 min 35 s from liftoff to splashdown

  • 21 h 36 min on the Moon

  • 2 h 31 min outside, never more than 60 m from Eagle

  • 21.55 kg of rock and soil brought home

Times are GMT, from NASA's Apollo by the Numbers and the Apollo 11 Mission Report. The Apollo Flight Journal and Lunar Surface Journal hold the full air-to-ground transcripts.

Items

  1. Liftoff

    Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center

  2. Earth parking orbit

    ≈ 2 hours, 32 minutes

  3. Translunar coast

    ≈ 3 days, 59 minutes

  4. Translunar injection

  5. Columbia docks with Eagle

  6. First look inside Eagle

  7. Lunar orbit

    ≈ 2 days, 11 hours

  8. Lunar orbit insertion

  9. Eagle undocks

  10. Powered descent

    12 minutes, 36 seconds

  11. 1202 program alarm

  12. Low-fuel light

  13. Touchdown

  14. Moonwalk

    ≈ 2 hours, 31 minutes

  15. First step

  16. Aldrin steps onto the Moon

  17. Flag planted

  18. Call from President Nixon

    Oval Office, White House

  19. Liftoff from the Moon

  20. Eagle and Columbia redock

  21. Eagle jettisoned

  22. Transearth injection

  23. Transearth coast

    ≈ 2 days, 11 hours

  24. Last television broadcast

  25. Reentry

  26. Splashdown

    Pacific Ocean