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SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON, July 20, 1969 (UPI) -- Man reached the moon Sunday at 4:17.42 p.m. (EDT). The landing by Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. in a spaceship named Eagle capped a millennium of dreams and a $24 billion American project that opened the world of the universe to mankind.
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For several long minutes the world seemed to stand still. The cool space fliers called out their altitude figures as they dropped toward the Lunar surface.
At 220 feet: "Coming down nicely."
At 75 feet: "Looking good."
At 30 feet: "Picking up some dust."
Then finally at 4:17.42 p.m.: "Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
At the time of the landing the Moon was about 238,548 miles from Earth. Michael Collins, the third astronaut of the Apollo 11 team, kept the command ship Columbia orbiting at an altitude of 69 miles while Armstrong and Aldrin eased their way down.
Collins was poised to swoop in and rescue his colleagues had anything gone wrong. But now that they are on the lunar surface, they are beyond his reach.
After giving their landing craft's systems a quick check, Armstrong and Aldrin simulated a countdown to make sure everything was set for their blastoff Monday.
Armstrong reported there were several alarm signals during the final minutes of the descent and this took his attention from looking for landmarks that would identify Eagle's precise touchdown pilot.
The landing site was on the lunar Sea of Tranquility, almost exactly on target. It kicked up a little swirl of dust.
"Very smooth touchdown," confirmed Aldrin.
Ground Controller Charles M. Duke told Collins in the command ship:
"He has landed. Tranquility base. Eagle is in Tranquility."
"You might be interested to know that I don't think we noticed any difficulty to adapt to one-sixth G," Armstrong reported. He said it seemed natural to move about in the gravity one-sixth as strong as Earth's.
This was a key concern of space officials, since they did not know how well the astronauts would be able to move around once they set foot on the lunar surface.
Armstrong's heart rate was 110 at the time the descent started and it shot to 156 beats per minute at touchdown. The rate quickly settled down to the 90s. There was no medical data on Aldrin.
Collins, in his first communication with "Tranquility Base," told his colleagues: "You guys did a fantastic job."
"Thank you," replied Armstrong. "Just keep that orbiting base ready for us."
"Will do," replied Collins.
Armstrong reported he cold see "literally thousands of little one- and two-foot craters around the area.
"We see some angular blocks in front of us."
He said there was a hill that appeared to be a half mile or a mile away.
At 4:38 p.m. (EDT) Earth control radioed up landmark information in an attempt to help the pilots precisely locate their touchdown site.
Duke told Collins that Eagle apparently landed "just a little bit long."
The landing site was an oval, eight miles long and three miles wide.
Computer calculations before launch gave them a 99.9 per cent chance of landing in it.
"I'd say the color of the local surface is very comparable to that we observed from orbit at this Sun angle, about 10 degrees Sun angle," Armstrong reported.
"It's pretty much without color. It's gray, a chalky gray as you look at the Sun line and a darker, ashen gray as you look at 90 degrees of the Sun."
Aldrin, called one of the best scientific minds America has ever sent into space, reported:
"We'll get to the details here what's around here, but it looks like a collection of every variety, shape, angularity - every variety of rock you could find ... It appears that several rocks and boulders look as if they're going to have some interesting colors."
The rock samples the astronauts will collect are one of the prime purposes of the mission. Scientists hope they will give some indication how the Moon - and possibly the world - were formed, and perhaps clues to the beginning of life itself.
While the Apollo fliers were landing, Russia dropped its mysterious Luna 15 satellite in a 9.9-mile high orbit that carried it above the Apollo landing site. The Soviets still gave no clue as to its mission, but some Soviet space sources have said it might swoop down to the Moon's surface, scoop up some soil samples and try to beat the Americans back to Earth.
While history was being made on the lunar surface, Collins told ground control from the command module: "Let me know when it's lunch time."
Aldrin's wife, Joan, who followed the flight from her home near the Houston Space Center, said it for the world when she exclaimed:
"I just can't believe it."
Jan Armstrong sat on a bed with her youngest son, Ricky, 6, and monitored the final minutes before touchdown. Mrs. Armstrong kept muttering, "Good, good, good" until the ship was safely down.
The Space Center has equipped the homes of the astronauts with "little black boxes" over which the wives can monitor the conversation between the spaceships and ground control. Mrs. Collins sat with the box in her lap during the final minutes before the landing.
The final phase of the historic mission began at 1:47 p.m. (EDT) when Armstrong and Aldrin separated their "Eagle" lunar lander from the "Columbia" command ship bearing Collins.
"Eagle's undocked. Eagle has wings," radioed Armstrong.
The lunar lander then pulled about 40 feet away from the Columbia and spun slowly while Collins inspected it from a command ship window to be certain there had been no damage during separation.
"You've got a fine looking flying machine there, Eagle," Collins radioed his colleagues after looking over the landing craft.
Then, at 2:12 p.m., Collins pulled the command ship two miles out of the way and at 3:08 p.m. the descent toward the Moon began.
