Today, July 20th, marks the 39th anniversary of first successful manned lunar landing in the history of humankind. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar surface while Michael Collins stayed in orbit with the command module.
Below is a photo that Armstrong took of the lunar module:
Armstrong photo of Lunar Module from a distance. Credit NASA History Office.
For more information about the Apollo program, check out the following sites:
- NASA Apollo Portal – All the online materials NASA has on the various Apollo missions, including press kits and audio and video clips.
- Apollo 11 Image Gallery from NASA – Set of cool photos, including the one above.
- Smithsonian Institute page on the Apollo program – Links to photos, crew histories, etc.
And because this blog is called Alaskan LIBRARIAN, I have to make note that all three of the Apollo 11 crew were authors. Click on the names below to get a list of books, articles and/or videos with contributions from that astronaut:
- Buzz Aldrin (24 items)
- Neil Armstrong (22 items)
- Michael Collins (14 items)
Most of these items should be available to you through your local library. If your library doesn’t have them, you can get them through Interlibrary Loan.
The Apollo program was undertaken during a time of great danger for the United States. It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis when we faced nuclear annihilation. It would have been easy to play it safe and focus on simple survival. Instead we looked outward and did something not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Will we rise to the challenge today? Or stay obsessed with keeping ourselves safe, no matter the cost to ourselves or others?
Filed under: history
What Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin almost forgot to leave on the Moon.
Next to the first boot print of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil A. Armstrong lies a tiny silicon disc about the size of a half dollar. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin almost forgot to leave the wafer which contained beautiful goodwill messages from 73 nations and excerpts from American presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon). Author Tahir Rahman recently discovered the historic relic and photographed the poetic messages from a rare replica of the silicon wafer. In an interview with Rahman, Aldrin revealed that the message disc was completely forgotten about until near the end of the historic Moon walk.
600 million people watched the first Moon landing and Armstrong eloquently stated that the landing was a “giant leap for mankind.” During the two and a half hour Moon walk, Armstrong and Aldrin almost forgot to leave the silicon disc. Fortunately, Buzz Aldrin remembered that it was in his sleeve pocket and tossed it out of the lunar module, Eagle onto the Sea of Tranquility. Neil Armstrong then touched it with his boot just before the closeout procedure.
The disc, made of a tiny wafer of silicon, has messages from Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, the Vatican and 73 other nations. Rahman revealed memos that U.S. government leaders were concerned about the image of America “taking over” the Moon. Therefore, a plaque declaring that “We came in peace for all mankind” was left as well as the goodwill messages. Ironically the company that created the disc (Sprague Electric) also made the triggering device for the atomic bomb project, code named the Manhattan project.
The messages are often prophetic, such as the one from Eric Williams, which simply states, “It is our earnest hope for mankind that while we gain the Moon, we shall not lose the world.” The messages were shrunk down to microscopic size onto a silicon wafer using microcircuit technology. The message disc story was forgotten, again. Historians focused on the main event and the passage of time has obscured the details of how the disc was created and the rush to get the project completed before launch.
After deciding to plant an American flag on the Moon and before the wording was finalized for the plaque, the U.S. State Department authorized NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine to solicit messages of goodwill from the leaders of the world’s nations for deposit on the Moon.
Author Tahir Rahman has beautifully represented each nation’s message in his new book, We came in peace for all mankind- the untold story of the Apollo 11 silicon disc. The book has received accolades from the Smithsonian air and space museum.
The silicon disc and some brief text describing it can be found at NASA’s web site at: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/images/html/as11.htm
Thanks for pointing this out.
Thanks for this wonderful review. It is my hope that the world unites again for mankind’s next great adventure into the heavens.
Tahir Rahman, author of We Came in Peace for all Mankind