HT This Day: July 25, 1969 -- Moon men are back home: All’s fine as trio boards the Hornet
The moon explorers scorched safely to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean earlier, ending their eight-day odyssey to the surface of the moon and back
Aboard U.S.S. Hornet in the Pacific Ocean - Apollo-11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins today landed aboard this aircraft carrier after successfully completing their moon-landing mission.
The moon explorers scorched safely to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean earlier, ending their eight-day odyssey to the surface of the moon and back.
Their capsule landed upside down in the sea - the only major flaw in an otherwise perfect mission. It had happened before - to Apollo -7 and 8, with no danger to the crew.
Because of the craft’s base-over-apex landing, it was several minutes before the first report on the crew’s condition was received. Then a recovery helicopter pilot radioed “The crew is excellent and ready to take on swimmers.”
Before splashdown, the Hornet said the spacecraft was right on target.
Astronaut Edwin Aldrin reported that he, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins had missed several radio calls from “air boss one.”
Then Aldrin said: “Just picking up your communication now.”
A smiling President Nixon watched recovery operations from aboard the carrier through a pair of binoculars and prepared to welcome moon-walkers Armstrong and Aldrin and command ship pilot Collins aboard.
Splashdown was within one mile (1-1/2 kms) of the target point, but about nine miles (15 kms) from Hornet and came exactly at 16.49 GMT (10.19 p.m. IST).
“We’re still in Stable 2 (upside down).” Armstrong reported, “but slowly righting ourselves.”
Eleven minutes later, with aircraft and helicopters overhead, Armstrong reported the ship bobbing right side up.
“Stable 1,” he called out.
The landing was not visible from the carrier because of a combination of a hazy sky and the fact that it was just after dawn in the Pacific.
Frogmen plugged a telephone into Apollo-11 and the astronauts told the outside world they were fine.
A “recovery technician” (frogman) handed three quarantine garments in to the astronauts through Apollo-11’s partially opened hatch. He was wearing one of the suits himself - a closely woven cotton overgarment fitted with a helmet, plastic visor and a gas-mask-like breathing canister with a biological filter.
Lt.-Col. Collins repeated that the three spacemen were in “excellent condition”. “Take your time,” he told the frogmen outside as recovery procedures continued at record speed.
Frogman Clancy Hatleberg then sprayed the outside of the spacecraft with germ-killing fluid. At that time the Hornet was about four nautical miles (7.4 kms) away and steaming fast towards the spacecraft.
The spacecraft was to be winched aboard the Hornet later, bearing its priceless cargo of moon rocks and soil samples.
The astronauts, clad from head to foot in the olive-green isolation suits started clambering into life rafts bobbing alongside the spacecraft.
One of the astronauts then helped a frogman close the hatch.
Mission control reported that the unofficial splashdown time was 195 hours 18 minutes and 21 seconds after liftoff from Cape Kennedy on July 16 at 1650 GMT.
This was a bare 45 seconds earlier than the original flight plan.
The successful splashdown fulfilled the late President John F. Kennedy’s pledge, made eight years and two months ago, that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and safely returning him to earth.”
It also marked the coming of age of the splashdown technique -21 splashdown with a 100 per cent safety record, including two sub-orbital flights.
In the mission control centre in Houston, technicians relaxed in front of their consoles for the first time since the start of the hazardous flight.
As they sat with headsets still on listening to recovery operations, there were big smiles all around. But tension would not fully evaporate until the astronauts were safe aboard the ship. Then, it will be time for cigars and handshakes.
The three astronauts will be held in quarantine for at least 18 days, till August. 11, when doctors are to decide after intensive tests whether history’s first moon visitors brought back a bacterium, fungus or virus which could conceivably unleash a devastating epidemic on earth.
The possibility is very, very slim, scientists say, but they are taking no chances.
The decontamination procedures lasted till 17.47 GMT (11.17 p.m. IST).
President Nixon watched through binoculars from the Hornet as the astronauts were then hoisted one by one aboard a hovering navy helicopter.
The copter put down on the Hornet at 17.57 GMT (11.27 p.m. IST) two minutes ahead of schedule. President Nixon, beaming, applauded.
A tractor towed the helicopter onto an elevator which lowered it one deck to a 35-foot-long, airtight van which will be the astronauts’ quarantine home till they reach Houston.
The three men stepped out of the copter, waved and disappeared into the van.
Armstrong led the way. Their walk in the open lasted a mere eight steps.
The mobile quarantine facility, as the van is called, will travel aboard the Hornet to Hawaii, be air-freighted to Houston and there be mounted onto a trailer-truck for transfer of Houston’s manned spacecraft centre.
Inside with the astronauts were a doctor and a technician. The van comprises a galley, bath, sleep and medical areas, a television set and other comforts.
Earlier, Apollo-11 capsule returning with three astronauts jettisoned its propulsion service module on schedule at 16.20 GMT (9.50 pm. IST), 15 minutes from its scheduled re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
During the re-entry, which started with the space ship going 39,360 kilometers an hour, the temperature on the heat shield of the capsule reached 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The landing target was shifted from 250 miles to the east last night when the weathermen forecast thunderstorm for the original touchdown point. The new target, for which the astronauts had to shift slightly the angle of their ship on reentry into earth’s atmosphere, was 1,520 km southwest of Hawaii.
A layer of ionized gases built up immediately around the cone-shaped capsule as it braked rapidly and a 3-1/2-minute radio blackout began.
Neil A. Armstrong, the spacecraft commander, took over from the automatic guidance system during the blackout for one minute to increase the glide angle of the ship and move the splashdown point 250 miles to the east.
Scientists will start on Saturday the task of deciphering the messages in rocks plucked from the moon.
Packed and sealed into two metal boxes by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin in the vacuum on the moon, the rocks will arrive at the lunar receiving laboratory here tomorrow.
They will be tapped first for any gases they might contain and these will be preserved for analysis.
On the same day, scientists will have their first look, through glass, at something no man had seen before the flight of Eagle: rock and soil samples from the moon.
Officials at the manned spacecraft centre here expect that the first report, based on what the scientists see, will be made soon after.
Next the rocks are to be separated into sample batches for preliminary tests. Later, the specimens will be cut into small pieces to go to 142 principal investigators waiting anxiously in nine countries.
The investigators, who have 600 collaborators, are in the United States, England, Japan, Belgium, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Scotland and Finland.
TV broadcast
Last night Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin dropped the highly technical approach which has marked their historic flight and became philosophical and almost emotional.
In their last scheduled television transmission from space. Aldrin told earth viewers he, Armstrong and Michael Collins felt “this has been far more than three men on a voyage to the moon, more still than the efforts of a Government and industry team, more still than the efforts of one nation.”
“We feel this is a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of mankind.” He added they felt Armstrong’s words on stepping on to the moon last Sunday - “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” -summed up their feelings.
Armstrong yesterday summed up the crew’s feelings as they faced just one more full day in space: “No matter where you travel it’s always nice to get home.”
He explained that the moon samples were closed in vacuum-packed containers and were sealed to prevent possible contamination of the earth.