T minus 25 seconds…20 seconds and counting…T minus 15 seconds…guidance is internal…12, 11, 10, 9…ignition sequence starts…6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0…all engines running…lift-off, we have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour, lift-off on Apollo 11…
Tower cleared…
She's lifting beautifully into the sky, a typically beautiful Saturn V launch.
16 July 1969. Apollo 11 took-off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to begin its epic journey of approximately 385,000 kms to the Moon. The crew was Neil Armstrong (Commander), Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin (Lunar Module Pilot) and Michael Collins (Command Module Pilot). The astronauts carried with them messages of goodwill from world leaders and a plaque reading 'We came in peace for all mankind.'
Twelve minutes after take-off the rocket entered orbit around the Earth.
Approximately 2.5 hours later the engine of the 3rd stage booster was fired to take the rocket out of Earth orbit and onwards to the Moon. At this point the rocket was travelling at close to 40,000 km per hour.
The opening bars of Richard Strauss's tone poem 'Also sprach Zarathustra' was used to accompany coverage of the Apollo missions.
Images sourced from NASA.
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