'One small step for man-
SPACE CENTER. Houston (UPI)—Man reached the moon Sunday at 4:17:45 p.m. EDT.
The landing by Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. in a spaceship named Eagle culminated a millennium of dreams and a $24-billion American project that opened the worlds of the universe to mankind.
So technically smooth was the landing and so confident were Armstrong and Aldrin that they decided to go ahead with their moonwalk Sunday night rather than waiting until Monday morning.
For several long minutes the world seemingly stood still while their final altitude figures in the cool space fliers called out their final altitude figures in their drop toward the lunar surface.
Capsule Communicator Charles M. Duke—Eagle you're looking great. Coming up 9 minutes.
Mission Control-We're now in the approach phase. Everything looking good. Altitude 5,200 feet.
Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
—Manual attitude. Control is good.
Duke—Roger. Copy.
Mission Control—Altitude, 4,- 200 feet.
Duke- Houston, you're go for landing. Over.
Aldrin—Roger. Understand go for landing.
Duke- We're go. Think tight.
We're go.
Aldrin-2,000 feet. Into the AGS abort guidance system. 47 degrees.
Duke—Roger.
Aldrin—37 degrees.
Duke—Eagle, looking great
You're go.
Mission Control—Altitude, 1,-600.
Duke—1,400 feet. Still looking good.
Aldrin----35 degrees.
Duke----35 degrees.
Aldrin—750 coming down to 23. 700 feet-21 down, 33 degrees .feet down to 19. 540 down to 30...15. 400 feet down at 9. A forward. 350 feet down at 4 static.
The fires given for forward and down by Eagle are reports of their speed—velocity in feet per second—both across the face of the moon and down toward its surface.
Aldrin—300 feet. Down $ 3^{1/2} $47 forward. One minute. $ 1^{1/2} $down, 70. Altitude velocity light. 15 forward. Coming down nicely. 200 feet. $ 4^{1/2} $down, $ 5^{1/2} $down. 9 forward. 100 feet. $ 3^{1/2} $down, 9
forward. 75 feet. Looking good.
Down $ \downarrow_{1} $2. 6 forward. 60 second lights on. Down $ 2 \downarrow_{2} $ . Forward.
Picking up some dust. Big shadow. For 4 forward. 4 forward driving to the right a little. Down $ \downarrow_{2} $ . 30 seconds.
Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong —contact light. Okay, engine stopped. ACA at a descent. Mode control both auto. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm off 413 is in.
When Armstrong reported "contact light," probes on the lunar module's landing pads had touched the moon.
Armstrong—Houston. We uh... Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
Duke—Roger, Tranquillity. We copy. You are on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again Thanks a lot.
2 KANSAN Jly. 23
1969
At the time of 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 in a 69 mile high lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin eased their way down.
Collins would have been able to swoop in and rescue his colleagues, had anything gone wrong on the descent, but now that they were on the lunar surface, they were beyond his reach.
One of the few problems during the descent occurred when Armstrong observed the Eagle's automatic guidance system was heading the ship into a rough landing site.
He told ground control:
"Houston, that seemed like a
very long final phase. The auto target was taking us right into a football field size crator with a lot of boulders ... it required us flying manually over the rockfield to find a real good area."
Armstrong sk im m ed the spaceship about 200 feet above the crator and landed four miles downrange from the proposed landing bullseye on the lunar Sea of Tranquillity.
NASA said the landing site appeared to be at 799 degrees north latitude and 23.46 degrees east longitude.
"Very smooth touchdown," confirmed Aldrin.
They had 55 seconds of fuel left for the descent engine when they landed.
Ground controller Charles M Duke then told Collins in the command ship;
"He has landed, Tranquility Base. Eagle is in Tranquility."
But in Communist China—home for one-fifth of mankind there was no report, no announcement, no word that two humans had reached the moon.
Almost all the world bore witness Sunday to mankind's greatest achievement.
Communist China apparently took very extensive steps to make sure that its citizens were not able to hear broadcasts of America's moon landing.
The Voice of America (VOA) said Monday the Red Chinese began "very extensive" jamming of VOA broadcasts from Taiwan, Nationalist China, when it started to give the report of Apollo 11 landing operation on Sunday.
Collins, like Armstrong, is 38 years old, and is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. Aldrin, 39, a full Air Force colonel, has been called one of the best scientific minds America has ever sent into space, and it did not take long for him to put that mind to work;
"We'll get to the details of what's around here, but it looks
like a collection of just about every variety of shape, angularity, granularity and every variety of rock you could find. The color, well it varies pretty much depending on how you're looking ... there doesn't appear to be too much of a general color at all. However, it looks as though some of the rocks and boulders—of
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