The Apollo 11 moon landing was made possible by 400,000 NASA workers. These men and women worked tirelessly over a 10-year period to make the Moon landing happen. It took a collective 4 million years of work and US$25 billion to take humans to the Moon.
650 million
53 million households tuned in to watch the moon landing on their black and white televisions. That’s an estimated 650 million viewers worldwide!
The pen is mightier than the sword
After their triumphant landing, a broken switch onboard Apollo 11 meant the astronauts faced being stranded on the Moon. In a moment of inspiration, the astronauts inserted a felt-tip pen into the switch hole, activating the ascent engine and saving the day!
The Eagle
The Apollo Lunar Module was nicknamed The Eagle, and piloted by the Apollo 11 mission commander, Neil Armstrong. With the entire world watching, Armstrong missed the original landing site, but still managed to find an alternative area with less than a minute of descent fuel remaining. Close call!
Close call
The first flag planted on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts is probably no longer there. As the astronauts departed, the flag was knocked over by the lunar module’s thrusters and has likely decomposed under the Moon’s brutal conditions in the years since it was left behind.
