Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Reactions to the Death of Neil Armstrong

We now have generations of people who have grown up with the knowledge that humans have walked on the Moon. Neil Armstrong, the man who took that first small step on another world passed away today after complications from heart surgery. It’s a tremendous loss for everyone involved with or interested in space exploration, and messages of condolences and remembrances are pouring in.

We’ll post many here, and feel free to add your thoughts or remembrances of Neil Armstrong in the comments section.

Neil Armstrong’s crew mate and fellow Moonwalker on Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin posted this on Twitter:

“On behalf of the Aldrin family we extend our deepest condolences to Carol & the entire Armstrong family on Neil’s passing-He will be missed. Neil & I trained together but were also good friends who will always be connected thru our participation in the Apollo 11 mission I know I am joined by millions of others in mourning Neil’s passing – a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew.”

From NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden:

“On behalf of the entire NASA family, I would like to express my deepest condolences to Carol and the rest of Armstrong family on the passing of Neil Armstrong. As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own.

“Besides being one of America’s greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation.

“As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong. We mourn the passing of a friend, fellow astronaut and true American hero.”

Astronaut Mae Jemison via Twitter:

“As young girl watching #NeilArmstrong step on the Moon, the stars came a little bit closer, and my world and expectations quite a bit larger.”

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin examine film taken of their mission. Credit: NASA

NASA Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana:

“Neil Armstrong was a true American hero, and one of the nicest gentlemen around. He was the epitome of what an engineering test pilot should be, and a role model for everyone who aspired to be an astronaut. He always took the time to share his thoughts on technical issues and his experiences from the past. I feel very privileged to have known him. He will be missed.”

President Barack Obama said he was deeply saddened, and hailed Armstrong as one of the nation’s greatest ever heroes, for having inspired a generation to reach for the stars.

“When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation,” Obama said in a statement. “They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible. And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”

Republican challenger for the White House, Mitt Romney, said Armstrong now “takes his place in the hall of heroes. With courage unmeasured and unbounded love for his country, he walked where man had never walked before,” Romney said. “The moon will miss its first son of Earth.”

Lon Rains, Chairman, Coalition for Space Exploration:

“Today we mourn the loss of Neil Armstrong, a true hero for all mankind. Neil was a humble man who devoted his life and his career to serving a greater cause. From the children who strive to explore the stars to those who devote their lives to reaching beyond the bonds of earth, one can only hope to follow in his footsteps. We are deeply saddened by the loss of this great man. We will forever celebrate his life, his accomplishments and his spirit.”

NASA has more information about Neil Armstrong on their homepage,

as well as this website:
http://www.neilarmstronginfo.com

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Neil Armstrong’s First Steps on the Moon

The iconic footage of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk is a must-watch, especially today when we remember Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the Moon. He passed away today at the age of 82. His enduring legacy will continue to spur us on to reach for the stars and take more first steps on other worlds.

Below is footage from Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, and Armstrong’s famous words, “Houston, Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed.”
Continue reading “Watch Neil Armstrong’s First Steps on the Moon”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Apollo 11’s Rocket Engines Found on the Bottom of the Ocean

Apollo 11 Launch
Apollo 11 Launch

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Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has located the Apollo 11 F-1 rocket engines and plans to recover them. “I’m excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we’re making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor,” Bezos wrote on the Bezos Expeditions website. “We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in – they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see.”

Bezos said that about a year ago he was thinking of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission and wondered if the F-1 engines that started the seminal mission to the Moon could be located.

The Saturn V used five F-1 engines in the first stage. The F-1 is still the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed, producing one and a half million pounds of thrust, burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 was launched and the five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean.

Even though the engines remain the property of NASA, Bezos hopes that the space agency would allow the recovered engines to be displayed at the Smithsonian or another museum.

“If we’re able to raise more than one engine, I’ve asked NASA if they would consider making it available to the excellent Museum of Flight here in Seattle,” he said. “NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore.”

Bezos pointed out that no public funding will be used to attempt to raise and recover the engines, as it’s being undertaken by him privately.

Bezos said he’ll keep everyone posted on the progress of the recovery of these engines.

Posted on by Jason Major

Best Views Yet of Historic Apollo Landing Sites

LROC image of the Apollo 11 landing site, acquired Nov. 5, 2011 (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

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Just over 42 years after Neil and Buzz became the first humans to experience the “stark beauty” of the lunar surface, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the remnants of their visit in the image above, acquired Nov. 5, 2011 from an altitude of only 15 miles (24 km). This is the highest-resolution view yet of the Apollo 11 landing site!

The Lunar Module’s descent stage, a seismic experiment monitor, a laser ranging reflector (LRRR, still used today to measure distances between Earth and the Moon) and its cover, and a camera can be discerned in the overhead image… as well as the darker trails of the astronauts’ bootprints, including Armstrong’s jaunt eastward to the rim of Little West crater.

The crater was the furthest the Apollo astronauts ventured; in fact, if you take the total area Neil and Buzz explored it would easily fit within the infield of a baseball diamond!

Neil Armstrong’s visit to the crater’s edge was an unplanned excursion. He used the vantage point to capture a panoramic image of the historic site:

Panorama of the Apollo 11 site from Little West crater. (NASA)

“Isn’t that something! Magnificent sight out here.” Armstrong had stated before he was joined by Aldrin on the lunar surface. “It has a stark beauty all its own. It’s like much of the high desert of the United States. It’s different, but it’s very pretty out here.”

Previously the LROC captured the Apollo 15 landing site, which included the tracks of the lunar rover — as well as the rover itself! And, just yesterday, the LROC site operated by Arizona State University featured the latest similarly high-resolution view of the Apollo 12 site. This location has the honor of being two landing sites in one: Apollo 12 and the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which had landed on April 20, 1967 – two and a half years earlier!

The Apollo 12 landing site in Oceanus Procellarum. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

Even though the US flag planted by Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean isn’t itself visible, the shadow cast by it is.

Apollo 12 was the only mission to successfully visit the site of a previous spacecraft’s landing, and it also saw the placement of the first Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), which included a seismometer and various instruments to measure the lunar environment.

Read more about this image on the LROC page here, and check out the video tour below of the Apollo 12 site.

Images and video courtesy of NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Tearing Apart Apollo 11 Inaccuracies

The movie trailer for Transformers 3 came out over a week ago, and seeing it is a facepalm moment for any true human spaceflight follower, fan, aficionado, or historian. I mean really, — and yes, I know this is a movie — but how could they portray what they call “a generation’s greatest achievement” so inaccurately? I originally decided I wasn’t going to post it, because it basically re-writes history and I can only imagine how the conspiracy theorists will run with this. Plus getting this kind of thing into the public mindset, I fear, will be another “Capricorn 1” moment where people construe the movie as proof that NASA is hiding things. But Robert Pearlman over at collectSPACE posted an article today, basically tearing apart the trailer, discussing every inaccuracy in detail. So watch the trailer, above, and then go check out Robert’s article — its great.

And then, while you’re at it, go read Robert Krulwich’s article on NPR’s website, where he gets a unusually lengthy response from Neil Armstrong about what really happened on the Apollo 11 moon walk, and why it was so short.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

‘Long Lost’ Apollo Footage Was Actually Released in 2009

News reports of some ‘long lost’ Apollo 11 footage surfacing in Australia sounded pretty intriguing, with articles about it appearing on several websites this morning. But surely, any of the long-searched-for-and-believed-lost footage finally showing up would have received a bigger fanfare than just a few articles. I checked with NASA Headquarters about this footage, and they told me it actually is the same video that NASA restored and released in 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.

These restored videos include a copy of a tape recorded at NASA’s Sydney, Australia, video switching center, where down-linked television from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek was received for transmission to the U.S., as well as original broadcast tapes from the CBS News Archive recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson that had not been viewed for over 30 years.
Continue reading “‘Long Lost’ Apollo Footage Was Actually Released in 2009”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Now Witness the Firepower of This Fully Operational (and slow motion) Saturn V

This is so cool – and impressive, most impressive! A 16mm camera located near the base of the Saturn V rocket captured incredible detail about the ignition and lift off of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The high-quality video slows down 30 second of footage to about 8 minutes, but it’s worth every second to watch! The narrator explains it all in great detail. You’ll see the first moments of ignition where the flames light and expand, then get sucked back into the flame trench; and fire and ice all in one video. It really is awesome!

Source: Huffington Post

Posted on by universetoday

Apollo 11 Pictures

Apollo 11 Crew Photo. Credit: NASA

Here are some Apollo 11 pictures; of the crew, the spaceships and the Moon landing.

Here’s a picture of the Apollo 11 crewmembers. On the left is Commander Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon. In the middle is Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and then Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin on the right.

Saturn V

This is a picture of the Saturn V rocket. This was the booster that carried Apollo 11 from the Earth to the Moon. Over the course of the Apollo program, NASA launched a total of thirteen Saturn V rockets.

Lunar Module

Here’s a picture of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module “Eagle”. This is the spacecraft that the astronauts used to descend from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon.

Lunar Experiments

Here’s a picture of Buzz Aldrin standing on the surface of the Moon during Apollo 11. You can see an experiment in front of Aldrin designed to detect “moonquakes”. And then there’s the Eagle Lunar Module in the background.

US Flag on the Moon

Here’s a picture of Aldrin standing beside the US flag placed on the Moon. There’s no wind on the Moon, so there’s a metal support bar holding up the flag.

Once they returned from the Moon, the crew of Apollo 11 were put into quarantine, in case they brought back any kind of lunar bacteria or viruses. This turned out to be unnecessary, and didn’t happen for future missions.

We’ve written many articles about Apollo 11 for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the astronauts reflecting back on their experience at the 40th anniversary, and here’s another look at the Apollo 11 landing site from lunar orbit.

If you’d like more info on Apollo 11, check out NASA’s 30th anniversary site here, and here’s the 40th anniversary page.

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about the Apollo 11 missions. Listen here, Episode 114: The Moon, Part 2.

Posted on by John Carl Villanueva

Sea of Tranquility

Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

The Sea of Tranquility is the landing site of Apollo 11, the mission that gave mankind its first ever walk on the Moon.

Walk? Yes, that’s right. The Sea of Tranquility is not actually a sea, so Neil Armstrong didn’t have to walk on water. In fact, there isn’t a single sea on the lunar surface. The Sea of Tranquility is actually a lunar mare. Now, although the plural of ‘mare’, ‘maria’, is a Latin word that means ‘seas’, these maria don’t have water in them.

Lunar maria were named as such because early astronomers mistook these areas as seas. You see, when you look at the Moon, particularly its near side (well, we don’t actually get to see the far side), i.e., the side which practically constantly stares at us at night, you’ll notice certain features that are darker than others.

Compare the Moon to a grey-scale model of the Earth, and you’ll easily mistake those dark patches for seas. By the way, in case you’ve been reading article titles (not the entire article) on this site lately, you might recall us mentioning water on the Moon. There’s water alright … underneath the surface, so even assuming that they’re plentiful, they don’t qualify as seas.

Let’s go back to our main topic. Called Mare Tranquillitatis in Latin, the Sea of Tranquility is found in the Tranquillitatis basin of the Moon and is composed of basalt. Maria are seen from Earth as relatively dark because the lighter colored areas are much elevated than them and hence are better illuminated by light coming from the Sun.

Whenever color is processed and extracted from multiple photographs, the Sea of Tranquility gives off a slightly bluish shade. This is believed to be caused by the relatively higher metal content in the area.

The actual landing site of Apollo 11’s lunar module is now named Statio Tranquillitatis or Tranquility Base. To the north of that specific area you’ll find three small craters aptly named Aldrin, Collins, and Armstrong, the privileged crew of Apollo 11.

The lunar module of Apollo 11 was not the only spacecraft to have landed on the Sea of Tranquility. There was also the Ranger 8 spacecraft … although “crash landed” is a more appropriate term. It wasn’t a failed mission though, since it was really meant to impact the lunar surface after taking pictures throughout its flight before striking the Moon.

Some people actually think the Apollo missions, particularly the lunar landings, were part of an elaborate hoax. Click on this link to read what the Japanese SELENE Lunar Mission discovered.

NASA has a huge collection of reliable links related to the Apollo missions.

Episodes about the moon from Astronomy Cast. Lend us your ears!

Shooting Lasers at the Moon and Losing Contact with Rovers
The Moon Part I

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

LRO Takes Second, Closer Look at Apollo 11 Landing Site

LROC's second look at the Apollo 11 Landing Site [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. Click for larger version.

. Click for larger version. “]
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera has taken a second look at the Apollo 11 landing site. These images were taken before LRO reached its science orbit of 50 km (31 miles) above the Moon, but the lighting is different from the previous images it took of this region, providing more detail and a whole new look at this historic site. This time the Sun was 28 degrees higher in the sky, making for smaller shadows and bringing out subtle brightness differences on the surface. The look and feel of the site has changed dramatically. See below for a close-up view.

.”]NAC image blown up two times showing Tranquility Base [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
The astronaut path to the TV camera is visible, and you may even be able to see the camera stand (arrow). You can identify two parts of the Early Apollo Science Experiments Package (EASEP) – the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflector (LRRR) and the Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE). Neil Armstrong’s tracks to Little West crater (33 m diameter) are also discernable (unlabeled arrow). His quick jaunt provided scientists with their first view into a lunar crater.

Nice going LROC!

This article was edited on Sept. 30 to correct a mistake about LRO’s orbit at the time these images were taken.
See our previous article on the first round of LROC’s images of various Apollo landing sites.

Source: LROC