People in Japan watch television coverage of the Apollo 11 mission, July 20, 1969. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
The moon was in the waxing crescent phase, with the sun sitting ten degrees above the horizon. At this angle, the sun’s rays put the lunar topography into relief. Armstrong spotted the planned landing site: a broad crater surrounded by a field of massive boulders, some more than nine feet wide. There seemed no smooth surface to land. Armstrong put the spacecraft into manual control, pitching Eagle forward. Just 350 feet from the surface, it flew over the boulder field in search of a less dangerous landing site. The engines consumed almost all of the last remaining fuel. Less than 200 feet from the surface, Armstrong finally found a level, safe place to land in the Sea of Tranquility.
With less than a minute of fuel remaining before they would be forced to abort the mission, Armstrong set Eagle down gently, so gently in fact that Eagle’s legs, whose honeycomb structure was designed to compress at impact, remained long. This would make Armstrong’s eventual step from the ladder to the footpad of the lunar module a bit of a leap. “Contact light,” Aldrin told Mission Control once the long metal probes mounted to the footpad struck the moon. Armstrong shut off the engine. With the LM safely resting on the moon, Armstrong added, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” It was 4:17 p.m. EST on July 20, 1969.20
In Rio de Janeiro, church bells started ringing throughout the city. Hundreds of Brazilians gathered at the Museum of Modern Art’s “space center” stood in silence at first, then cheered “bem-sucedido” (“successful”). In Tokyo it was at 5:17 a.m. on a hot and overcast Monday morning. Cheers of “Apollo juichi-go banzai ” (roughly translated as “Long live Apollo”) were heard. Riders on the bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka followed the flight on the public-address system. In Nice, well-heeled guests had gathered at the Le Negresco, a palatial hotel on the French Riviera, for an elaborate gala in honor of the first lunar landing. Live news coverage of the Apollo 11 mission played on a dozen televisions set up throughout the banquet hall. Patrons dined on a space-themed menu and danced a special step named after the lunar module.21 In Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands assembled in a public square to listen to the radio over loudspeakers as they watched space films projected on a large outdoor screen. Millions more met in public squares in South Korea and Ethiopia and in countless other cities and towns throughout the world to witness the lunar landing with others. Given the popularity of the event, the Korean government extended the city curfew by three hours. Thousands of people from Montreal to Brussels, who could have watched the coverage on their own televisions at home, filled parks and squares to view the lunar landing with others. In Paris, 36,000 joined together at the Palais de la Découverte to watch the landing together. A New Yorker who stood with thousands of other people in Central Park during a rainstorm to watch the landing on a gigantic Eidophor screen explained, “Well, it was something that we wanted to see together with a lot of people.”22
Television and radio crews had a handful of hours to fill between the lunar landing and the revised estimate for the moonwalk, which initially was 9:00 p.m. EST. As the astronauts prepared for the next phase of their mission, CBS aired British prime minister Harold Wilson giving a speech from his study in London: “I suppose it’s an achievement which incorporates all of the work, all of the discoveries of the mathematicians, and the scientists and the space experts, almost from the earliest days of mathematics and science. An incorporation that acknowledges the experience of many nations.” Cronkite then asked correspondents in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, and Belgrade to report on foreign reactions to the touchdown. According to reporters, audiences in London and Amsterdam watched quietly and then gave a “sigh of relief.” A woman in Paris said, “I think this is a very important day and a wonderful day as far as the whole universe is concerned, because it’s the landing on the moon.” The CBS correspondent reporting from Rome added that Pope Paul VI watched television coverage from the Vatican Observatory after spending much of the evening viewing the moon through a telescope. In Belgrade, the correspondent posited, “Yugoslavia has adopted the three American astronauts as its own heroes.”23 Another report came from the USIA Apollo exhibit in Indonesia, which was packed by a massive crowd.24
After a light meal of bacon bars, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, coffee, and a pineapple-grapefruit drink, the astronauts began the cumbersome task of suiting up. At 10:28 p.m. they vented the cabin’s oxygen and opened the hatch. Armstrong knelt and moved backward through the opening. He paused on the porch of Eagle. Before he would set foot on the moon, Armstrong made sure that the scene would be captured on TV. Pulling a D-ring with his left hand, he released the LM’s equipment bay, where a television camera was mounted. The footage soon lit up television sets of more than half a billion people back on Earth, one-fifth of humanity. Hundreds of millions more were at their radios. On reaching the last rung of the ladder, Armstrong jumped onto Eagle’s golden footpad. He told those listening in that the “footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 to 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained.” With an arm outstretched holding the ladder to steady himself, Armstrong lifted his left leg. At first he placed his boot cautiously into the lunar soil, testing its give, before fully taking his first step. It was 10:56 p.m.25
People in Norway watch television coverage of the Apollo 11 mission, July 20, 1969. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” he proclaimed.26
Armstrong’s first words on the moon relayed the universalist ambitions of America’s space effort. It echoed the “We Came in Peace for All Mankind” message inscribed on the plaque mounted on the lunar module, intended to be left forever on the lunar surface, and the countless pamphlets, films, radio broadcasts, and television interviews. Neither NASA public relations nor the USIA composed this message. As it had been for the Apollo 8 crew, Armstrong was left with the sole responsibility of scripting his own first words. The first words spoken on another celestial body resulted, in part, from the US space program’s policy of openness. The larger effort to differentiate the United States from the Soviet Union, to signal the values and benefits of a democratic society through how the country conducted Apollo, permeated every gesture, every step of the mission. Years later, historian Stephen Ambrose told Armstrong that “everybody in the world knows the line, and everybody in the world is so grateful you didn’t say, ‘that’s one giant leap forward for the United States.’” This comment identifies the power of inclusive language, capturing the geopolitical implications of Armstrong’s message.27
Nineteen minutes later, Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the moon. They unveiled the plaque mounted on Eagle’s leg and read the inscription for the global audience. The astronauts then moved the camera to a tripod a few dozen yards from the lunar module. In front of a live global television audience, they unpacked the American flag from its protective steel case, drove its pole into the lunar regolith, and extended the horizontal telescoping rod. The flag caught on the rod, preventing the astronauts from extending it fully. This created a rippling effect, making the flag look as if it was flapping in the wind. Next, they spoke with President Nixon, deployed scientific experiments, and collected lunar samples. Before returning to the LM, the astronauts pulled out a packet containing the Soviet medals in honor of two deceased cosmonauts, an Apollo 1 patch in honor of their deceased colleagues, and a gold olive-branch pin that signaled the peaceful nature of the mission, and left it in the lunar soil. After less than three hours on the moon’s surface, Armstrong and Aldrin were back inside Eagle.28
“Absolutely bloody marvelous,” exclaimed Anthony Crowhurst, a solicitor’s clerk in London. He had set his alarm clock for 2:00 a.m. Like many people throughout the city, he made sure that no matter what hour of the day, he would witness the moonwalk. “I leaped out of bed feeling pretty awful and I just smoked away watching TV until 4:45 am… it was w
orth waiting for.” While people danced in the streets of Santiago, Chile, reports from other cities—such as Mexico City, Oslo, Belgrade, and Rome—describe downtowns as deserted because millions were watching landing coverage in their homes. In Bangkok prisoners who were to be released that day supposedly refused to leave because the jail was showing coverage of the moon landing on a TV set. A judge in Wollongong, Australia, reportedly had a television brought into the courtroom so he could watch coverage while he heard cases. In Beirut the announcement “Ladies and gentlemen. The Moon is now within man’s grasp” interrupted coverage of a major air battle over the Suez Canal that was part of the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel. Instead of covering the battle, the rendition of “Oh Moon I Am with You” by the popular singer Feirouz played on television sets.29
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin descends the ladder on the lunar module during the Apollo 11 mission, July 20, 1969. (NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION)
Lella Scalia, an elementary-age child in Italy, knew “it was one of those special evenings, really special… because it was special for everybody.” She recalled watching the moonwalk on a black-and-white television set on a hot July night. Her mother wore a flowered dress, and her father play-acted walking on the moon. She nodded on and off throughout the night, with her parents waking her up, “and the scene was always the same: lights, voices, talks, the word [LM], a spider in the belly that had the world’s three heroes in it.” And then, at last, her parents shook her awake and said, “It’s time.” She remembered Ruggero Orlando reporting from the United States. Armstrong descended the ladder and spoke his famous words. “‘Now I could sleep,’ said my mother, a little moved. I could leave the hot velvet couch and go to bed. To dream about the Moon, not lonely and empty anymore.” Along with Scalia’s family, twenty million people in Italy watched the moon landing. Supposedly, no robberies or muggings occurred throughout the country that night.30
Millions of Romanians stayed up through the night to follow the flight as well. Scînteia, the leading Communist Party newspaper, called Apollo 11 “undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary events in the whole history of mankind” and noted that Armstrong’s message “aroused a tremendous wave of enthusiasm in the whole world, which held its breath while watching the grand mission of the daring explorers.”31
A woman in the capital of Somalia gave birth to a baby boy and named him Armstrong Abdurahman Osman after the first man on the moon. The US Embassy explained that it was “publicized over the radio and in the press, [and] had the coffee house devotees buzzing.” Babies born in other corners of the world, including Lebanon, Scotland, and Tanzania, were also named after the Apollo 11 crew. Seven new mothers in Lima who gave birth during the Apollo 11 mission named their sons Neil, and a baby girl in the Peruvian capital was named Selena after the Greek goddess of the moon.32
During Armstrong and Aldrin’s moonwalk, electric utilities throughout the world recorded an unprecedented upsurge in consumption. The VOA broadcasts in thirty-six languages reached an audience of 750 million, more than twice the number that followed John Glenn’s flight in 1962. Five million of Switzerland’s total population of six million watched coverage on their television sets.33 The BBC’s domestic and foreign services, thirty-seven other national networks, and approximately two thousand individual radio stations in Latin America relayed and rebroadcast VOA programs.34 All India Radio relayed VOA prerecorded programs and dedicated over twelve hours of airtime to the live VOA broadcast, reaching an estimated audience of more than 85 million. Radio Djakarta kept its studio open late to broadcast VOA coverage, a break in its decade-long political refusal to broadcast American radio.35 With the help of 1,400 radio stations in Latin America, another estimated 500 million people heard VOA programming.36 More than 3,600 foreign television and radio stations broadcast the relayed transmission of the lunar landing to audiences in more than sixty non-Communist countries. It was the first time in Laotian history that radio listeners heard news about a world event as it was taking place.37
An early-morning television press conference featured Japanese prime minister Satō praising the landing as “epochal in the history of mankind.” Other foreign leaders around the world expressed their congratulations to the astronauts and the United States, using the global rhetoric cultivated by years of US information programming. Far away—both geographically and politically—Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu deviated from his prepared speech to praise the first lunar landing, interrupted periodically by boisterous applause from his audience. The achievement, he reflected, was “in the interest of all mankind,” phrasing that mirrored US public diplomats’ Apollo 11 messaging. The Algerian representative on the UN Security Council used similar language when he congratulated the American delegation: the lunar landing “is to the glory of man, above all.”38
People in South Korea watch Apollo 11 coverage on a large outdoor screen, July 1969. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
In addition to providing live coverage of the flight, the USIA’s Motion Picture and Television Service worked quickly to create clips of all phases of the flight, transmitting them via satellite to Tokyo, where they were made into prints and then distributed to television stations throughout Asia.39 Foreign television networks drew on USIA material, including older television clips, to fill out their live reporting on the lunar mission. Television news anchors often used USIA- and embassy-supplied visual aids, including charts, models, moon globes, and space suits. The walls of the Prague television studio were covered with embassy-supplied space photographs and posters, Czech television anchors used the USIA’s models during their telecasts, and NASA press kits proved to be a useful source of information for the station. Austrian television broadcast twenty-eight hours of continuous moon landing coverage, which drew on USIS films, models, photographs, a space suit, and USIA text material.40
On July 21, leaders of Venezuela and Chile, among other countries, announced national holidays.41 The headline of Beirut’s an-Nahar read “Moon Age—First Day.”42 Many people expressed their enthusiasm and congratulations to local embassy and USIA officials. As USIS Rabat reported, “We continue [to] receive countless phone calls praising [the] successful Apollo journey… as well as visits from individuals offering congratulations.”43 A headline in one of Romania’s Communist papers called the flight “a brilliant victory of man.”44 Reports from some countries even noted that American expats were stopped on the street and congratulated.45 In Warsaw people laid bouquets of flowers on the lunar module model on display at the US Embassy, and in Tokyo people left paper cranes at the US Embassy for good luck.46 Many nations, including the Congo and Algeria, released Apollo 11 stamps.47 Letters, telegrams, poems, and drawings filled USIA posts’ mailboxes.48
Although widely lauded, Apollo did not receive universal acclaim. As a CBS journalist stationed in Tokyo reported on the lunar landing, a crowd of 3,500 Japanese students filled the city streets, protesting the US government.49 The US Embassy in Dar es Salaam described a scene of three youth leaders at the local university using bullhorns to protest Vietnam and call for the “slaughter [of ] leading imperialist gangster [President Nixon]” even as the astronauts walked on the moon. A newspaper in Niger questioned the high cost of lunar exploration, given more pressing needs on Earth. The Libyan anti-American weekly publication al-Rakib quoted a Cuban diplomat who commented, “Sending a man to the Moon is a useless luxury.”50
The Soviet Union restricted live coverage of the lunar landing, but Apollo 11 did feature in subsequent press, radio, and television programming. For the most part this coverage balanced enthusiasm for the mission with descriptions of the importance of the Soviet robotic probe Luna 15, which orbited the moon as Apollo 11 landed. Planned as a simple return mission, Luna 15’s transmissions cut out within minutes after it began powered descent on July 21. Later analysis found that the spacecraft had crashed into the side of a mountain in Mare Crisium.51 Soviet news called Apollo 11 and the Soviet Luna 15 mission
“interrelated wonderful achievements.” An article in Pravda referenced Frank Borman’s visit to the USSR in early July and his statement that Project Apollo was made “possible through the common efforts of all mankind,” including Russians from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky to Yuri Gagarin.52
Among the Soviet Union’s closest Eastern European allies, Hungary offered the most praise for the mission. All Eastern European countries—save East Germany, Bulgaria, and Albania—carried live coverage of the Apollo 11 mission. Almost all of the front pages of Czech newspapers featured the landing.53 The East German Der Morgen newspaper argued that “the moonwalk of the US astronauts is a success which no nation can claim for itself” because it relied on accomplishments of mankind “from Galileo to Einstein.” In a similar vein the Polish paper Trybuna Ludu called the astronauts “the ambassadors of humankind” and stressed that the success of the mission was based on the efforts of many countries over time. Życie Warszawy, another Polish paper, commented that “today we rejoice together with the astronauts, with their families, with all Americans and all mankind.” The overarching message in the Soviet press was that Apollo 11 was a shared human achievement as opposed to a national mission. The media in China, North Korea, and North Vietnam did not acknowledge the flight, while Cuban media covered some of the mission. The VOA attempted to reach audiences by broadcasting on two channels to circumvent Chinese government jamming.54
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