First Moon Landing: Apollo 11 - Eagle Has Landed | NASA Documentary | 1969

● Visit our main channel: ►Facebook: This 1969 film – originally titled as “The Flight of Apollo 11: Eagle Has Landed“ – is a vintage documentary produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It provides an “eye-witness“ perspective of humankind’s greatest adventure, the Apollo 11 mission, through television, motion picture and still photography. The film tells the story of the historic first landing of men on the Moon in July, 1969. It depicts the principal highlights of the Apollo 11 spaceflight, from the launching of the Saturn V moon rocket, through the exploration of the lunar surface, to the safe return of Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz“ Aldrin, and Michael Collins to Earth. The title of the film refers to Neil Armstrong’s famous radio message “The Eagle has landed“ as the lunar module touched down. The film has received the following awards: the Certificate of Exhibition; Edinburgh Film Festival, 1969; Certificate of Merit, American Science Film Association, 1969; Gold Camera, U.S. Industrial Film Festival, 1970; and Ionosphere Aware, Atlanta International Film Festival, 1970. It is probably narrated by TV’s Doctor Who - Tom Baker. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States’ Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013. To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. About Apollo 11: Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours after landing on July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC; Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Michael Collins piloted the command module Columbia alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moon’s surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent just under a day on the lunar surface before rejoining Columbia in lunar orbit. Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16 at 9:32 am EDT (13:32 UTC) and was the fifth manned mission of NASA’s Apollo program. The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a command module with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that returned back to Earth; a service module, which supported the command module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a lunar module that had two stages - a descent stage for landing on the Moon, and an ascent stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit. After being sent to the Moon by the Saturn V’s upper stage, the astronauts separated the spacecraft from it and traveled for three days until they entered into lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into the lunar module Eagle and landed in the Sea of Tranquility. They stayed a total of about 21.5 hours on the lunar surface. The astronauts used Eagle’s upper stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that blasted them out of lunar orbit on a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and landed in the Pacific Ocean on July 24. The landing was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and described the event as “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.“ Apollo 11 effectively ended the Space Race and fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.“ For more information about the Apollo 11 spaceflight, see: First Moon Landing: Apollo 11 - Eagle Has Landed | NASA Documentary | 1969 TBSpA_0007