The date and the crew
The first landing of humans on the Moon took place on 20 July 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, not in 1967 or any earlier year. The crew were Neil Armstrong, the commander, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the lunar module pilot, and Michael Collins, the command module pilot. Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the lunar module, named Eagle, and touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on 20 July. Armstrong stepped onto the surface a few hours later, which, because of the time difference, was on 21 July in Universal Time. Collins stayed in orbit aboard the command module, Columbia.
The pair spent a little over two hours outside the lunar module, collecting samples, setting up experiments and planting a flag. They then rejoined Collins, and the crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on 24 July 1969.
The goal and the clock
The landing was the answer to a challenge set by President John F. Kennedy in May 1961, when he asked Congress to commit the country to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out. The goal was set against the background of the space race with the Soviet Union, which had launched the first satellite and the first human into space.
By the start of 1967 the programme had good reasons for confidence. The Mercury and Gemini flights had demonstrated orbital rendezvous, long-duration flight and spacewalks. Gemini had finished in November 1966. The next step was to fly the Apollo spacecraft itself.
What 1967 changed
On 27 January 1967 the Apollo 1 fire killed the crew of the first planned Apollo flight during a ground test. The investigation found a pure oxygen cabin, widespread flammable materials and a hatch that could not be opened quickly. The result was a redesign of the command module and a pause in crewed flights that lasted until October 1968.
That interval shaped the route to the Moon in three ways.
- A safer spacecraft. The command module that flew to the Moon had a new outward-opening hatch, fire-resistant materials and revised wiring. Those changes were a direct result of the fire.
- A more careful test sequence. With the crewed programme on hold, NASA used the time for uncrewed testing. The first flight of the Saturn V, Apollo 4, took place in November 1967 and went well. The next Saturn V flight, in April 1968, had significant problems, and engineers worked through them before putting people on top of the rocket.
- A changed organisation. Quality control and management of contractors were tightened after the congressional hearings, and the programme took a more cautious approach to risks.
Other events in 1967 also mattered. The Surveyor 3 soft landing in April, together with the other Surveyor landers, showed that the lunar surface could support a spacecraft, while Lunar Orbiter photographs helped to identify promising landing sites. Meanwhile, the death of Vladimir Komarov in the Soviet Soyuz 1 mission in April 1967 was a reminder that the Soviet programme was struggling with its own problems.
The final steps
After Apollo 7 tested the new command module in Earth orbit in October 1968, Apollo 8 took a crew around the Moon in December 1968, the first humans to leave Earth orbit and travel to another body in space. In early 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module in Earth orbit, and in May 1969 Apollo 10 took the full set of spacecraft to lunar orbit and flew the lunar module close to the surface without landing. Each of these steps was a rehearsal of part of the landing, and each was possible partly because the programme had been forced to slow down and take the tests in order.
Apollo 11 launched on 16 July 1969 from Florida on a Saturn V. Four days later the lunar module separated from Columbia and descended. The landing itself was manual in its final phase, with Armstrong taking control to avoid a boulder-strewn area, and the module touched down with little fuel remaining.
A milestone with a long shadow
The landing was watched by a very large television audience around the world, and it met the decade deadline set eight years before. It is difficult to separate that success from the earlier tragedy. The crew of Apollo 1, and the engineers and astronauts who worked after the fire, are widely regarded as part of the story, and later Apollo missions continued to be flown with the knowledge that spaceflight remained dangerous.
Further landings followed, with six crewed landings in total by the end of 1972. Apollo 13 in 1970 did not land, after an in-flight emergency forced the crew to return. The programme as a whole stands as one of the largest peacetime engineering efforts in history, and its path went directly through the events of 1967.