Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • safe in their command module 1/4 of a 1,000,000 miles from Earth.

  • Apollo 11 is closing in on the move.

  • The trip to the moon is rather strange and that you're not allowed to look at the moon.

  • The reason has to do with the thermal conditions.

  • To keep the heat evenly distributed, you have to turn broadside to the sun and rotate the machine like a chicken on a rotisserie.

  • But that's about to change.

  • Apollo 11 must fire its rocket engine and be captured by the moon's gravity, a maneuver called lunar orbit insertion.

  • A mistake at this stage could prove fatal.

  • Lunar orbit insertion was one of the more challenging aspects of the Flight.

  • 11.

  • This is Houston.

  • Your goal for Alli over right maneuver had to be essentially perfect.

  • Capture happens behind the moon out of sight of Mission Control.

  • If anything goes wrong, the astronauts are on their own.

  • We'll be on the other side.

  • Three days into their historic journey, Apollo 11 is behind the moon, cut off from Mission Control.

  • But film footage and onboard voice recordings capture the astronauts first reactions to their close up view of the alien world, a month.

  • That big mother over here.

  • Come on, now.

  • But I don't.

  • It was a bulbous and three dimensional huge sphere.

  • Bellies duck out toward us, filled the whole window so close that you're almost worried about hitting it.

  • But one down there, Neil Hell of a but didn't offer me any particular warm invitation to go further.

  • Okay, We're a minute and 1/2 away from acquisition time.

  • After around 35 anxious minutes, Mission Control are waiting to hear from the astronauts.

  • There it is.

  • Coming up.

  • Wait here.

safe in their command module 1/4 of a 1,000,000 miles from Earth.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it