Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1146457
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 JULY 2019 NEWS 1969 MOON LANDING ONE of mankind's greatest achievements started on 16 July, 1969. Inside Houston's Johnson Space Centre, a nerv- ous mission control waited pa- tiently at their consoles. Dec- ades after the development of rocket technology since WW2, and now in a space race against the Soviet Union, the United States of America would be guiding the Apollo 11 rocket and its three-men crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, to a place where no man had stood be- fore. The excitement of the mo- ment was shared by millions around the world, as what was previously seen as the stuff of dreams, edged closer to be- coming reality. The eight-day mission of the three astronauts got off to a perfect start, as the Saturn 5 rocket to which their space modules were attached, flew into a temporary parking or- bit 103 nautical miles above the earth's surface, allowing the crew to perform a system check aboard the spacecraft. The astronauts' venture be- yond Earth's atmospheric borders was marked by an intensive 10-hour-a-day, six- days-a-week training regime, ensuring their physicality was in top shape for the challenges they would be facing. Newspapers, radio and tel- evision stations were trans- fixed on that day, with cover- age on the crew, their families, and everything surrounding the Apollo 11 mission filling newspaper columns around the world. Much like the rest of the world, even Malta was watching. A Times of Malta report on 18 July 1969, featured a whole page of articles on the crew's hygiene, their menu while in orbit, their instrumentation and even the medical supplies which would be taken into space. The Apollo spaceship would be orbiting the circumference of the earth for one and a half orbits at 115 miles above the earth's surface, before en- tering the third stage of the journey, where the astronauts would be slung at 25,000 miles an hour towards the lu- nar surface. The 238,000 miles jour- ney towards the moon was computer guided, leaving the astronauts responsible for only minor alterations to the course the shuttle would be taking and systems check aboard the Apollo. Then on July 21 1969, the long-awaited day when man- kind would conquer territory that had previously lain in fic- tion, arrived. Malta too waited in anticipa- tion, tuning in to the broad- cast on Italian state television RAI to follow attentively the Apollo mission. The mission involved Arm- strong and Aldrin splitting from command module pi- lot Michael Collins in a lunar module called Eagle, landing the craft on the moon while Collins orbited around them. Maltese-Australian scien- tist Anthony Gerada, a com- munications supervisor, was among 170 scientists, techni- cians and support staff at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station in Australia, involved in a relay link project between the lunar module and the manned spacecraft of the Na- tional Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, Texas, responsible for ground communications coordina- tion between the Station and Houston. Astro-photographer Leon- ard Ellul Mercer remembers that momentous day. "Every- one was talking about it. To your generation, that day is historic, to us it was some- thing out of a science-fiction novel." Back in the day, television sets belonged to the privileged few, with Ellul Mercer recall- ing how entire families and communities gathered around television sets to see Arm- strong stroll across the lunar landscape. At 8.17 pm GMT, the historic touchdown time of 102 hours, 45 minutes and 42 seconds in- to the Apollo 11 mission, was released by Mission Control, as 'the Eagle has landed' ech- oed across the globe. As recalled by Ellul Mer- cer, the time in Malta when the lunar module landed on the moon was around 4am, prompting newspapers and television programmes alike to release special media issues on the global event. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours 39 minutes after the Eagle landed, with Buzz Aldrin joining him 19 minutes later. The Times of Malta at the time released a second edi- tion, with new details on the moon landing including the astronauts' experience on the lunar surface and the dark conditions Armstrong report- ed on. One of the front-page arti- cles reads that Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut accompanying Neil Armstrong on the sur- face of the moon, reporting "a very powdery surface", while also finding a 'purple' rock. "Aldrin reported the rocks were rather slippery and they had to bounce about as they walked around the spacecraft," the article says. Statements from leaders of 73 countries around the world on a silicon disc the size of a 50-cent piece, also featured a message from Malta's Prime Minister at the time, Gorg Borg Olivier. "On this unique and historic occasion, when man first set foot on a planet If you believe... they put a man on the moon. KARL AZZOPARDI trawls the Maltese coverage of the historic moon landing of 1969 and speaks to astronomy veterans Gordon Caruana Dingli and Leonard Ellul Mercer about that fateful day in history 50 years since landing on the Astronomical Society veterans Gordon Caruana Dingli and Leonard Ellul Mercer Pushing man's boundaries into space: Neil Armstrong (right), the first man to land on the moon, and below, Elon Musk, the billionaire SpaceX entrepreneur who will take paying passengers into space Second edition: how latest news came to the public before news became a thing of the Internet, 30 years later