La mision

First Man on the Moon | |
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|     The first successful manned mission to the Moon will always remain a profoundly heroic page in the human history. In 1969, with |
|the space technologies being still rather primitive, but the exploration spirit and scientificcuriosity burning high and bright, the|
|USA started its dramatic Apollo lunar program. On July 20th of 1969, the first in the history of the humankind manned flight to land |
|on another celestial body was accomplished with a fascinating triumph. Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man from the planet |
|Earth to step on the surface of the Moon. Let us have a closer look at the courageousfigure of the first man on the Moon and the |
|details of that unprecedented lunar venture. |
|     Apollo 11, launched on July 16 of 1969 from the Kennedy Space Center, happened to be the fifth mission of the American Apollo |
|program on the manned exploration of the Moon. That was also the thirdmanned flight towards the Moon. The crew on board of Apollo 11|
|included commander Neil Alden Armstrong, lunar module pilot Edwin Eugene Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins. Almost a |
|million people were witnessing the spacecraft launch from the nearby beaches and highways. Many more - hundred of millions, including|
|American President Nixon, were anxiously watching that grandevent on TV. |
|     By July 11th, Apollo had reached the orbit of the Moon and started preparing for the historical lunar landing. The convenient, |
|smooth and flat, landing site in the area of the Sea of Tranquility had been found by the earlier missions of Ranger 8 and Surveyor |
|5. The descending of the lunar module Eagle carryingArmstrong and Aldrin was controlled by computers from the NASA Mission Control |
|Center in Texas, but their guiding was complicated by numerous reported program alarms and was even threatening to land the module on|
|an unsafe rocky spot far from the planned place of landing. Neil Armstrong had to quickly react to prevent a disaster. He took manual|
|control of their lunar module and, atlast, at 20:17 UTC of the 20th of July, the first manned mission successfully landed on the |
|Moon. They only had 30 seconds of fuel left to complete the landing! |
|     In six and a half hours after the Eagle had descended, Neil Armstrong, for the first time in the history of the humankind, |
|stepped onto the surface of theMoon. His lunar words "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind" became famous |
|all over the world. Later, he was followed by Aldrin. Despite some technical complications, hundreds of millions of people on the |
|Earth were able to see the first B/W images of ghostly-looking people in spacesuits moving on the surface of the Moon. |
|     For theremaining hours that the piloted lunar module spent on the Moon's surface, the astronauts planted on the Moon the US |
|flag and left a mission patch with various Earth messages. They also were experimenting with getting adjusted to the lunar gravity |
|and balance by trying different step methods, were photographing, writing down their impressions and observations, and drilling the |
|corelayer of the lunar surface to obtain samples of the Moon's soil. More than 48 pounds of lunar material were collected and loaded|
|into the module. The astronauts were working so hard and even got a warning from the Control Center to slow down, as their metabolic |
|rate elevated to a dangerously high level. Having completed their dramatic mission, both astronauts were able to safely return the...