Collins evaluates a mock-up of the Lunar Module cabin, 1963.
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Inventor Allyn Hazard tests The Mercury Suit in 1962 in a crater in California’s Mojave Desert.
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One of the original Mercury Seven, Slayton was grounded by a heart condition before he could fly. Pictured here in 1959, he rides an Air Bearing Orbital Altitude Simulator, designed to duplicate the tilting motions needed to maintain proper altitude or position during space flight. In 1963 he became the director of flight crew operations and, among other things, made all crew assignments during Gemini and Apollo.
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Members of Astronaut Group 1 try on the suits for the first time. Clockwise from left: Donald K. Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Virgil Grissom, Alan Shepard (kneeling), and Walter Schirra.
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Neil Armstrong prepares for launch on March 16, 1966, in the Gemini VII cockpit.
NASA
On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy set forth the priorityof landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and returning him safely to earth in his Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs. The following year, he and Vice President Lyndon Johnson began a cross country tour of American space facilities to witness NASA’s progress, starting in Huntsville on September 11.
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By 1966, NASA had approved North American Aviation’s design for the Apollo Command Module. Here, workers at their plant in Downey, California, install wire harnesses that will carry electrical currents throughout the CM.
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The day after NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958, Wernher von Braun’s fiftieth Redstone rocket had a successful launch in the South Pacific. Then the Director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, von Braun and his team were tapped to build the rocket that would beat the Russians to the Moon. He was named Director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center when it opened at the Redstone Arsenal in 1960. There he would become the chief architect of Apollo’s Saturn V.
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Armstrong eats breakfast at home in Houston.
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“You don’t hear it in your ears,” Collins remarked on the first few seconds of Apollo 11’s flight. “You feel it in your whole body.”
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Spectators watch the lift-off.
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Buzz Aldrin’s boot leaves a sharp imprint in the lunar soil.
NASA
Buzz Aldrin takes a moment from the busy timeline to salute the American flag, a familiar splash of patriotic colors on the moonscape. Moments later, Armstong joined him to take a call from President Nixon.
NASA
Celebrating the landing in the Mission Operations Control Room.
NASA
Joan Aldrin turns away from the television screen as the Eagle is landing.
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Joan Aldrin, surrounded by friends and family in Houston, applauds as she watches splashdown.
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An estimated four million people turned out to watch the Apollo 11 heroes ride down New York’s “Canyon of Heroes” route on August 13.
Neil Leifer
