This day 40 years ago saw the landing of the first manned spacecraft to reach the moon. The lunar module touched down on the surface of the moon at 20:17 UTC, and shortly thereafter Neil Armstrong broadcast the famous message to Mission Control in Houston: “The Eagle has landed.” Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the two astronauts in the lunar module, then spent some time preparing for the first moonwalk, and it was not until 02:56 UTC on 21 July that Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.
Armstrong famously fluffed his line: “One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Black-and-white television signals of the event were transmitted from a camera which had been transported on board the Eagle, and they were picked up by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia and transmitted to a worldwide audience of more than 600 million. The astronauts returned to the lunar module, which took off at 17:54 UTC, and they returned to earth on 24 July.
The first moon landing represents a remarkable achievement given the extremely primitive computer technology available at the time, and the fact that the feat has been replicated only a few times since. The enormous efforts necessary to make the moon landing a reality were inspired by President Kennedy’s vision in 1961: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”