July 20,1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind

By NASA

July 1969. It’s a little more than eight years since the flights of Gagarin and Shepard, followed quickly by President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon before the decade is out.

It is only seven months since NASA made a bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the way to the moon on the first manned flight of the massive Alabama-built Saturn V rocket.

Now, on the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sit atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The three-stage, 363-foot rocket will use its 7.5 million pounds of thrust to propel them into space and into history.

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