The Apollo 11 Moon Landing A Story of Disaster and Triumph

NARRATOR: On July 20, 1969, at 9:56 PM Houston time, American astronaut Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon bringing to an end an unprecedented scientific race between the USSR and the United States. MATTHEW: People around the world were glued to the images: Showing Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder of the lunar module and taking the first steps on the lunar surface. NARRATOR: The moon landing makes the Apollo space program the most ambitious in history. It had cost nearly 140 billion dollars in today's money and more than 400,000 people were involved.

It would be impossible to reproduce such a project on this scale today. Even at the time, there was no certainty that America would succeed in beating the Russians to the moon. GLYNN: That was virtually impossible to do. In the time frame that we had. JEFFREY: NASA's budget is currently $20 billion, compared to that 60 billion back then. NARRATOR: Since the end of the Apollo program, mankind has never returned to the moon, only memories remain of this phenomenal adventure, along with video footage much degraded over time.

ED: The original pictures are really hard to tell what's going on. If you could see Neil's foot coming down on that picture, you're a better man than I am. NARRATOR: But now, using new technology, we can recreate the key steps of this extraordinary space program to relive the Apollo story as it has never been seen before. Astronauts, flight directors and engineers share their memories of both the triumphs and the tragedies during the most intense years of this space race.

GENE: We were startled by screams coming from the crew, and we listened to our crew die. NARRATOR: This is a story that almost finished before it began with the tragic deaths of the first Apollo astronauts and nearly ended as dramatically with an explosion on Apollo 13. FRED: My instant feeling was just a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I knew we had lost the landing. JAY: We're going to get these guys back. "Failure is not an option." NARRATOR: But in July 1969, Apollo 11 had a date with destiny.

It's the bet made by a president and an entire country. NARRATOR: July 18, 1969, 55,000 miles from the moon. American astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exit through the upper hatch of the Apollo 11 command module to go inspect the lunar module, the Eagle. JEFFREY: The lunar module is the most beautiful machine ever engineered and built. Some of the things that made the LM such a challenge was that it had to be a very powerful, very sturdy, very robust machine. But it couldn't weigh anything at all.

NARRATOR: Two days later, the incredible American spacecraft must attempt the first ever manned lunar landing in history. The mood is tense: the 23-foot-high lunar module has never been fully tested in real conditions. And in Mission Control in Houston, many were preparing for the worst. ED: I did not think we were going to make it on this mission. I figured we would land, probably, the fourth attempt. MATTHEW: The United States was prepared for the eventuality that the astronauts would be lost on the surface of the moon.

NARRATOR: There's no going back. The Apollo spacecraft attached to the Eagle lunar module is hurtling toward the moon, preparing for its entry into lunar orbit. It was a journey Apollo missions 8 and 10 already made some months earlier. The difference this time, though, is huge: Apollo 11 will have to land on the moon and take off again. Everything is going as planned, but some confidential information causes alarm at NASA Headquarters in Houston. MATTHEW: At the same time that Apollo 11 was launching toward the moon, the Soviet Union was readying and even launching its own spacecraft

on a similar journey. NARRATOR: Luna 15, an unmanned Soviet probe, was launched three days before Apollo 11. It is already in orbit around the moon and is preparing for its lunar landing. America is not the only nation committed to conquering space. The USSR is a formidable adversary, willing to do anything to be the first on lunar ground. A collision with Luna could be fatal to the American astronauts. And in the middle of the Cold War, a dramatic event like this would have unprecedented consequences.

MATTHEW: Concerned that Luna 15 would strike Apollo, NASA had one of its astronauts, Frank Borman, reach out to a contact in the Soviet Union, President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Vislak Kelvish, but was unable to have a conversation with him because Borman did not speak Russian and Kelvish did not speak English. NARRATOR: By the time NASA manages to get ahold of Luna 15's flight plans, the fate of the two rival missions is already sealed: Apollo 11 and Luna 15 will never cross paths. NARRATOR: The first will make history. The second, the Soviet mission, will crash into the moon in the Sea of Crises, 13 hours after Neil Armstrong's first step.

The incident marks the height of space race tensions between the Soviets and the Americans: a competition that began ten years earlier and knew no bounds. October 4, 1957. A small probe some 23 inches in diameter enters orbit 590 miles above the Earth. Its name is Sputnik, and it is Russian. Its beep will taunt the United States, amidst a Cold War where the scientific competition between the two world powers is, in reality, a military rivalry.

MATTHEW: The American scientific and intelligence community knew that the Russians would launch a satellite probably in 1957 or 1958. It was also frightening because the ability to launch a satellite was the same as the ability to lob a nuclear warhead. NARRATOR: America, as well, must prove that space belongs to it. The Vanguard program will be its weapon against the Soviet satellite. Almost two months to the day after the success of Sputnik, America launches an attempt in view of the entire world's cameras.

JAY: It rose about 2 feet off the ground, and it, rocket crumbled and it was thrown out in the weeds. NARRATOR: When it explodes 3 feet off the ground, the Vanguard satellite is the disgrace of the American superpower. It is an excruciating failure. JEFFREY: The Russians had already had Sputnik, and as a result, the headline the next day when Vanguard blew up was "Kaputnik," because we had just disgraced ourselves. So, we were in a footrace. NARRATOR: Buoyed by their success, the Soviets launch the Luna program, then accomplish a victory by sending the first man into space.

Indisputably, the USSR is a pioneer. JEFFREY: Russia had bigger rockets. Russia had more robust spacecraft. Russia had flown higher. They had flown further. Yuri Gagarin was the first human being to go to space. NARRATOR: But the United States has a sizable advantage: money. Behind the scenes, an army of talent is making preparations at a space agency created just three years previously: NASA. The government agency in charge of developing and managing civil space exploration projects. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, just sworn in as president, is to be the face of this new, victorious America.

NARRATOR: On September 12, 1962 at Rice University in Houston, Kennedy delivers a landmark speech, one that galvanizes an entire nation. The Apollo program is born. PRES. KENNEDY: We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because JEFFREY: John Kennedy spoke millions of words in his career as a public servant.

But in that speech, there was one verb, it was the verb "choose." It said, "We choose to go to the moon." And that said something very powerful about American initiative, about America's pioneering experience. GENE: We'd blown up our second Atlas rockets. And we had launched Alan Shepard so we had a total of 20 minutes manned space flight experience. We'd never been to orbit, and we were challenged to go to the moon.

GLYNN: Our reaction was, "My goodness! The president has asked us to do something that's impossible!" So we said, "OK, but he asked us to do it, so we might as well go do it." NARRATOR: A practically impossible gamble for a program that was already colossal, and whose proposed budget was met with resistance by Kennedy. MATTHEW: Shortly after making his challenge, uh, to land a man on the moon, President Kennedy tried to walk back from this request, arguing that perhaps a moon landing was so expensive and dangerous.

NARRATOR: Kennedy, in the end, goes as far as to declare that America will be on the moon before the end of the 60s. The president, however, won't see his dream fulfilled. On November 22, 1963 at 12:30 PM, the 35th American president is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. But his call to action had been heard. And across the country, tens of thousands of young people already had one dream: to be part of the adventure. JIM: I answered an ad, um, which was simply a picture of the moon and it said: our job is to think our way to the moon and back.

GLYNN: When we landed on the moon, the average age in the control center of the core of people who made technical decisions was 27 years old. JACK: There was this whole generation of Kennedy's kids that wanted to be involved in science and technology on the space program. Not just space, other areas too, and it happened in technology, it happened in medicine, it happened across the board because of this spirit of: this is what we can do, this what we're capable of doing.

NARRATOR: In 1967, the Mercury and subsequent Gemini programs, launched with the creation of NASA, have met their objectives. The American space agency is confident, and Apollo's test flights with astronauts can now begin. Mission AS-204, later renamed Apollo 1, is prepared for in record time. MATTHEW: In their effort to beat the Soviet Union to the moon, NASA worked very quickly, as did its contractors. Astronauts described working at NASA in this period as succumbing to a kind of go fever, in which, recognizing that the stakes were high,

tried very hard to ready a craft for travel as quickly as possible. NARRATOR: On January 27, 1967 the crew, made up of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, begins a trial in the Apollo vessel on the ground in real time, at the top of the rocket. The launch is scheduled to take place one month later. But as soon as they're enclosed in the sealed command module, the team realizes that communication with the ground teams is not going well. GENE: We had difficulties with our countdown procedures. We had difficulty with communications. The crew reported noxious odor inside the spacecraft. And we'd call a halt, sort out problems and then continue on.

NARRATOR: After five hours running tests, a short circuit is detected in the electrical system. GENE: At 6:27 that evening, we again shut down the countdown before we transferred from external power on the launchpad to internal power on the spacecraft. And four minutes after we were startled by screams coming from the crew, and we listened to our crew die.

NARRATOR: Within seconds, a spark turns the oxygen-filled spacecraft into a raging inferno. The fire is so violent that the three astronauts are burned alive. The following recording contains the cockpit audio at the time of the accident: (melancholic music) NARRATOR: Roger Chaffee, the youngest of them, was about to turn 32. JAY: Gus Grissom who died in the Apollo 1 fire, he talked to me 10 days before he died in the fire.

He says. "That Apollo spacecraft is a lemon. They got so many things wrong with it, it's going in all directions, it's not safe. We gotta get that straightened out." GLYNN: We thought we had Apollo fixed, um, and, and there really were some warning signs that it was not. And we paid the price, and the crew paid the ultimate price for that overconfidence. NARRATOR: With the spacecraft's interior literally melted, it took over two hours to recover the bodies. JEFFREY: NASA knew, the astronauts knew, the administrators knew, "We pushed too hard.

We pushed too fast. And we all knew that this spacecraft had problems, that this spacecraft could kill somebody." And the very first one before anyone flew, the very first of those spacecraft did kill somebody. NARRATOR: NASA is immediately questioned over its handling of the Apollo program. The public wants someone held accountable, even if this means the moon must wait. GENE: We were the problem. We did not do our job. We must accept the responsibility for this accident, the loss of the crew.

NARRATOR: At NASA, some executives are ousted and even abandoning Kennedy's dream is on the table. GENE: We had to convince the people, people of our nation, our bosses, the politicians, that we were smart enough to continue this program that would take people to the moon. And this was the real challenge. NARRATOR: In the end, the Apollo program is reviewed from top to bottom over the course of almost two years. Among the details, a key component stands out: the command and service module, which must take the astronauts to the moon. And enable the success of a mission that no one expected to fly so soon: Apollo 8.

NARRATOR: Before the Apollo 1 accident, NASA was sure that it had the most successful spaceship ever created: the CSM, or command and service module, which consisted of two basic parts. One contained life support supplies, fuel and the propulsion system, and the other housed the team. MATTHEW: The Apollo spacecraft was an almost unimaginably complex collection of parts. The instrument panel of the command module itself had nearly 500 switches. NARRATOR: Only the command module will return to Earth, but the journey will put it to the test.

It is a conundrum for the company in charge of its design. Because, as few people know, the agency only oversaw the manufacture of the Apollo program's elements. For the first time in history, a space agency will mobilize an unheard-of number of subcontractors. MATTHEW: People often forget that 9 out of every 10 dollars that NASA spent on the moon race was spent on American contractors. There were in fact thousands of contractors and subcontractors all across the United States that were responsible for building every component of Apollo.

ROGER: The direct numbers associated with the Apollo program at the height of the program in the mid-1960s and were about 36,000 NASA employees and about 360,000 contractors, so we're approaching 400,000 people. NARRATOR: Among them, North American aviation, the company that won the contract for the Apollo spacecraft. But its production is so burdensome that delays build up, and in 1965 NASA demands that the module be ready for 1967. The deadly Apollo 1 accident hits the brakes on its manufacture. But it also allows the redesign of the vessel and the attainment in the end, of perfection.

The Apollo program can continue. But after several successful test missions, a piece of confidential information interrupts NASA's plans. The agency decides to take a foolhardy risk. Spring 1968. The CIA learns that the USSR is preparing to launch a manned Zond mission around the moon by the end of the year. The news is a bombshell for NASA. ROGER: The Russians looked like they were making a push to send a cosmonaut to the moon in time for the anniversary in October of the Soviet Bolshevik Revolution and the Americans were concerned

that they might stick somebody on there and send them to the moon and beat us. BILL: Keep in mind that Apollo was not a program of exploration. It was a program to beat the Soviet Union. MATTHEW: The rocket was ready; the Apollo command module was ready. But the Apollo lunar module was not. As a result, a decision was made to shuffle the test missions that were scheduled, and to try to launch astronauts to the moon as quickly as possible. NARRATOR: The lunar module, the final link in the program which must detach from the spacecraft and go down to the moon, is far from ready.

It will be impossible to do a test run in space. And so, for the United States to be the first to send a crew into orbit around the moon, NASA decides to go without the lunar module and to move up its timeline. Testing must wait, and against all expectations, Apollo 8 is entrusted with a then-inconceivable goal. JEFFREY: NASA made the outrageous, improbable decision to move Apollo 9 up to Apollo 8, not to make it an Earth-orbit flight, and just to say to these guys, "You know our schedule. Take this ship out to the moon. Orbit it ten times. And come home. That will change our program and will change humanity."

NARRATOR: Bill Anders, slated to test the lunar module in flight, accepts the mission with James Lovell and Frank Borman. The crew was supposed to spend Christmas with family in Acapulco. Instead, they are to orbit the moon, with no guarantee of success. On December 21, 1968, the crew is placed on top of the Saturn V rocket. Not far from the Launch Pad where Apollo 1's men died only two years earlier.

7:51 AM, Saturn V lifts off. BILL: We had simulated almost every aspect of the mission, with every failure you could imagine, but we did not simulate the actual stresses in vibrations of the initial liftoff. It was just unbelievable. It was so loud, uh, you couldn't hear yourself think; it was so violent that it just threw you around like a rat in the jaws of a terrier. But I thought to myself, "My gosh, if we missed that part of the simulation, what else have we missed?" GENE: That, I think, was probably the riskiest mission that we'd ever flown in the history of the Apollo program. Because, uh, we were doing everything for the first time.

All the software on board the spacecraft and in Mission Control, all the techniques that we used for navigation had to be, essentially, proven. NARRATOR: After 9 minutes in flight, the spacecraft separates from the first two stages and enters Earth orbit. Then it pulls itself away from Earth's gravity, heading straight for the moon. After 25 hours in flight, Houston's CAPCOM, responsible for communicating with the crew, read the newspaper headlines to the astronauts as they experience life in zero gravity.

BILL: When I got out of my seat, I wanted to see how zero gravity felt. NARRATOR: But even as the astronauts enjoy the pleasures of space, on the ground, the engineers are very concerned: Apollo 8 still has a critical moment in store for the crew. PHILIPPE: On Apollo 8 for the first time a spacecraft is going to go behind the moon. Since there is no satellite beyond the moon to transmit communications, communication is cut off, as the moon becomes, essentially, a shield. NARRATOR: The astronauts never speak openly about their fears. For 32 minutes, the three men will be cut off from the world and left on their own in space. But what if things don't go as planned?

JACK: Apollo 8 was everything, oh my God what if something goes wrong so we're going to the moon for the first time with humans. It's like, anything you're doing for the first time. You're worried about every step of the way not just this one or this one. That's the case here, we worried about all of it. JEFFREY: There's a pilot's code. If any of the other guys had a moment of crisis or panic, they wouldn't talk about it. And they never will talk about it.

NARRATOR: Apollo 8 will be the mission to allow humans to see, with their own eyes, the far side of the moon, the side never visible from Earth. BILL: We were surprised that, whereas the front side of the moon is relatively smooth. The backside was very rough, and there's still some debate as to why that's the case. NARRATOR: Lovell and Anders are so captivated when they see the far side of the moon that Borman has to remind them to focus on an extremely delicate maneuver. In the flight's 69th hour, the spacecraft must enter lunar orbit.

To do this, the engines will be turned back on for a little over four minutes. BILL: The lunar orbit insertion maneuver was a very dangerous event. If we burned too long, we would crash into the moon before we came out on the other side. If we didn't burn enough, we'd go off into space around the moon and God knows where we'd go. NARRATOR: The astronauts will go on to describe this episode as the longest four minutes of their lives. But it all goes as planned. They do some reconnaissance work to scope out possible landing spots for future missions, but they never have the chance to land on the moon. From their cockpit, their consolation prize is found in the breathtaking views,

so spectacular that after several orbits around the moon, the commander imposes mandatory sleeping hours to the crew. PHILIPPE: So, Will Anders grumbles, he doesn't agree with him, he stays there looking out the window, but Borman tells him: "Now, no arguing. Go to bed." NARRATOR: The sight they've just taken in is, indeed, one never before seen by man. The astonished crew takes some 700 photographs. One exceptional shot will be seen around the world.

NARRATOR: During their fourth trip around the moon, the astronauts of Apollo 8 happen upon an overwhelming sight: an "Earthrise." JEFFREY: I think it was Borman who spotted it first, and said, "Look at that! It's beautiful! We've got the Earth." BILL: Lovell sent me, grabbed me some color film, and I started taking pictures. JEFFREY: They take a bunch of pictures. And then the scene changes. And the shot is lost. They did not know what they had in that camera.

NARRATOR: One of these photographs, said to be taken by Bill Anders, will become an iconic image. And yet, some historians can't say conclusively who the photographer was. MATTHEW: One astronaut of the crew, and to this day we're still not entirely sure who, managed to take the iconic Earth Rise image, which was immediately celebrated by the public around the world as a staggering image. NARRATOR: Dozens of shots were taken, but within a few months, this one came to represent an entire mission. And our world.

FRED: It did show obviously the whole Earth with the small halo around it that represents our atmosphere. And a rather beautiful body, compared to looking at the moon. JEFFREY: When you look at that fragile sphere, where all of human history has taken place, where horrors have played out, and where great acts of kindness and love have played out, it's all on that ball. And we must tend to it, or we will break it. NARRATOR: NASA quickly sees the value in filming and broadcasting images from space. But its goal was not simply to put on a show.

It also needed to justify the billions spent on this race to the moon. ROGER: Movies was an important part of that process and they realized that in the Mercury mission when John Glenn flew in which he bought his own camera, a 35 millimeter camera at a drug store and took it with him into space. They had not provided anything like that for him and he took these pictures, brought them back, they were developed and they became very iconic images. MATTHEW: NASA always felt the need to explain to the public and particularly to Congress why Americans were spending the money that they were to travel through space. And it found the astronauts to be the best spokespeople to do this.

NARRATOR: So, on December 24, NASA decides to live broadcast the crew of Apollo 8 to the entire world: the 1968 space version of reality TV. The shots of the lunar module and the moon through the spacecraft windows will be watched by a billion men and women in 64 different countries. It is such a success that NASA decides to include video coverage in all of the Apollo program missions. To close out this groundbreaking live footage, the agency asks Commander Frank Borman to choose something to read from space.

FRANK: And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth. JEFFREY: Frank Borman still laughs about this, uh, he was told, "You know, a billion people are gonna watch us. That's one-third of every human being on this planet is going to be watching you. It will be the largest television audience for a single event in history. You guys have to figure out something to say."

NARRATOR: Borman will think long and hard without finding inspiration. In the end, his wife will be the one to give him the idea of a text no one had considered. JEFFREY: He was in his kitchen at about 4 in the morning, and his wife came in, and his wife came in and said, "It's gonna be Christmas Eve. What about Genesis?" And he said, "Perfect." FRANK: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

NARRATOR: This reading of Genesis from space would go down in history. A moment of grace that would almost erase an unknown episode during Apollo 8, one that could have put a premature end to the mission. NARRATOR: The astronauts of Apollo 8 took off just 18 hours ago. The commander is exhausted; the first hours were taxing. BILL: Frank Borman decided he would take a rest, 'cause he was the commander and that was a lot of stress on him more than the other of us had.

He took a sleeping pill and he went to go to sleep. Pretty soon he said, "Uh-oh, I'm sorry," and he had explosive vomiting and diarrhea. NARRATOR: Within the confined spacecraft, panic sets in. BILL: And I grabbed an oxygen mask and put it on Lovell. And he said, "You're not supposed to use that, that's for fire." I said, "I'm going to use it because it smells so bad." And so there were little bits of stuff everywhere. And we had little uh, paper towels that you use on an airplane to rub, you know, dry your hands.

So we started grabbing those and trying to catch these particles like netting butterflies. PHILIPPE: Borman's one of the first astronauts to get what we today call space sickness. When you move around in low gravity, its disorienting, the inner ear has trouble getting its bearings and it can bring on nausea. NARRATOR: Against the better judgement of Lovell and Anders, Borman insists on hiding the incident from CapCom. The reason is simple: he knows perfectly well that Houston wil immediately abort the mission for sanitation reasons. After several long minutes, he allows NASA to be informed, but through a confidential channel, one that the public would never have access to.

JEFFREY: They did report it on a private loop, nobody else could hear it. The flight surgeon did say, "I'm calling an abort. I want you guys to turn around and come home." And the fact was, within 24 hours, as often happens with motion sickness, he had acclimated. ROGER: No pilot anywhere wants to admit to a flight surgeon anywhere that they cannot fly. Wally Sheragh was sick during Apollo 7, Frank Borman was sick during Apollo 8.

Armstrong and Lovell had the sniffles basically when they came back from the moon. There's lots of other instances of these sorts of things although they're not going to admit it very much. NARRATOR: This space sickness would become the reality for most of the crews; indeed, life far from Earth presents unusual challenges. For the Apollo 8 crew, on December 25th, it is now time o initiate the return to Earth. One of the most intricate stages of the mission. After circling the moon 10 times, the astronauts must turn the engine back on to pull out of lunar orbit.

If they fail, Apollo 8 will become a permanent lunar satellite, with the three astronauts' corpses floating inside. The engine works perfectly, launching Apollo 8 back toward Earth. JACK: When you're coming at that speed, the temperature build-up is sufficient to melt iron, very, very high. It's like a fire and it interferes with all the communications, all that gas is coming around it and so you can't talk during re-entry at all.

NARRATOR: The spacecraft then jettisons the service module, which will burn out in the atmosphere. The command module and its crew will head straight into the Pacific Ocean. JEAN-FRANÇOIS: In low Earth orbit, you're moving at about 5 miles per second, 17,000 miles per hour. When you come back from the moon, you're doing about 7 mile per second, so that's more than a third faster than the speeds encountered in low Earth orbit. JACK: If you imagine the Earth is a big ball with some you know atmosphere around it and the spacecraft is coming back from the moon toward the Earth, the only thing that will slow it down is the Earth's atmosphere itself.

Too shallow, you went too far, too steep you went too deep and it was allowed, I think about a degree and a half difference that's it. PHILIPPE: The definitive critical element, of course, is the opening of the parachutes. There have been cases in the history of space exploration where this didn't go well, for example the first Soyuz flight, Soyuz 1 with Russian astronaut Vladimir Komarov, the parachute didn't open so the spacrecraft crashed, and the astronaut died.

NARRATOR: On December 27, 1968, Apollo 8 becomes a legend, and Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders become national heroes. BILL: When Apollo 8 was launched, the moon was very new; it was just a thin crescent. So even today, when, if I look up at the moon during that time of the month, I get a little bit of the hair on the back of my neck stands up. It reminds me, uh, that we actually went there.

NARRATOR: Riding high on this success, NASA decides it is ready to land on the moon, following two other tests. The agency then schedules 12 more missions, through Apollo 20, to send 20 astronauts in total to the moon. But the story doesn't go exactly as planned. The three astronauts who have a date with destiny are Michael Collins, Apollo 11's command module pilot, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong, the mission's commander who will have to land the astounding lunar module, the Eagle, on the moon.

To test the moon landing on Earth, NASA develops a strange contraption, effective, but hard to control and particularly dangerous. PHILIPPE: They had to create a pretty unique spacecraft that would fly in the Earth's atmosphere so they could test it on Earth, but one that would also recreate the sensations and the reactions it would have during a lunar approach. But this spacecraft was very dangerous, there were several accidents, including one during a flight piloted by Neil Armstrong.

NARRATOR: On May 6, 1968, the future hero of Apollo 11 is in flight, but the test spacecraft stops responding. Armstrong's calm composure will save his life. JEAN-FRANÇOIS: If he had ejected one or two seconds later, he would have died. So, he knew to make the right decision instantaneously without the slightest hint of panic or doubt in his voice. NARRATOR: With grace under pressure, Neil Armstrong calmly navigates the Eagle landing, which could have ended in tragedy.

This extraordinary trait will be one of NASA's selection criteria. In 1966, during the Gemini program, which preceded the Apollo program, Neil Armstrong became a hero. For the first time. NASA thought it had lost its crew after they lost control of the capsule, but Armstrong's composure would save the mission. Who else, then, to save Apollo 11 to land on the moon? July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have just landed the Eagle on the moon. ED: I was sitting there but I wasn't touching anything.

My feet were not touching the floor, my backside was not touching the chair, and neither were my arms touching the armrest. I felt like I was levitating over the chair. NARRATOR: 500 million people worldwide have front-row seats to the show, thanks to satellite broadcasting. The whole world holds its breath. MATTHEW: People around the world were glued to the images: haunting black and white images transmitted by radio signal to a variety of antennas, and then rebroadcast around the world, showing a ghostly form,

Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder of the lunar module and taking the first steps on the lunar surface. JEAN-FRANÇOIS: My parents came to wake my sister, my twin brother and me, and they sat us down in front of the television that they had bought just for this a few weeks earlier. And that really left an impression on me in my childhood, left me with the desire to go to space to experience an extraordinary adventure like that one. NARRATOR: That July in 1969, America won the space race. And humanity had just accomplished one of the greatest feats of the 20th century.

GENE: It was incredible payoff for all of the work that we had done. The payoff day was the day that Neil Armstrong stepped outside the spacecraft and got on the surface of the moon. NARRATOR: On lunar soil, even as America cries with joy, Neil Armstrong utters a legendary sentence, inspired by this magic moment. NEIL: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. NARRATOR: Upon his return to Earth, he will say he improvised it all.

These words, like Apollo 11, have become legendary and continue to generate controversy even after the astronaut's death. Captioned by SubTitlePro LLC