LLRV Testing Contributed to Apollo 11’s Success

NASA marks the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing this month. The world watched in awe as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set their lunar module Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia. This video, featuring comments from the late Apollo 11 astronaut and research pilot Neil Armstrong, explores the contributions of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) development and flight-testing at NASA’s Flight Research Center, recently renamed in Armstrong’s honor, to the Apollo moon-landing program. As we reflect on the accomplishments of the Apollo program, NASA is preparing to make the next giant leap to venture even further into space. The new Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft will enable astronauts to capture an asteroid and bring it into orbit around the moon, thus enabling scientific investigations of the origins of our solar system. Just as we solved and trained how to land on the moon, we are driven to explore the cosmos, to make America’s “next giant leap“ to send astronauts to Mars.