FIFTY years ago astronauts walked on the moon for the very first time.
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The people of Wagga watched history being made live on television along with the rest of mankind.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landing this Saturday, The Daily Advertiser has taken a step back in time to see this historic event unfolded in its pages.
The moon is the next stop
Monday, July 21 - 1969
MAN will take his first steps on the moon today.
Amidst earlier speculation that Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin would make their moon landing four hours sooner than was planned, mission control reported late tonight that all was well aboard the spacecraft and the landing would go ahead as was scheduled.
Armstrong and Aldrin were due to land their four-legged lunar module on the surface of the moon at 6.14am today, New South Wales time.
Tonight the project was going so well that there seemed no reason to doubt that at 4.16pm today they will be the first men ever to set foot on the moon.
It was thought late last night that "emotion" would prevent the astronauts from taking their four hour rest period and that they would step on to the moon as soon as they landed there.
This would have advanced the schedule by about four hours.
Man sets foot on moon
Tuesday, July 22 - 1969
AT 12.56PM yesterday, Neil Armstrong, the American astronaut, became the first human being to set foot on the moon.
A short time later Armstrong unveiled a plaque and read out this inscription:
"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Missed the magic
Tuesday, July 22 - 1969
SAN Isidore (pop 200) people missed yesterday's magic moment in history when they were cut off from the moon men by a freak power failure.
The tiny Catholic community, six miles, south-west of Wagga was blacked out at 12.30pm.
"It couldn't have happened at a worse time," said one disappointed resident last night. "We lost the picture just as they were about to step onto the moon."
To make matters worse, the Southern Riverina County Council's electricity supply truck bogged down in a soggy paddock as workmen rushed to rectify the fault.
"We didn't see it either," said one of them later. "It was just one of those days."
An S.R.C.C spokesman said the fault was caused when a pole collapsed near the soil conservation farm on the outskirts of Wagga.
"There was a lot of wind and the ground was very wet - and this probably caused the trouble" he said.
Power was restored to San Isidore at 5pm.
Wagga's television hiring firms were rushed with inquiries yesterday when the moon walk was brought forward.
Mr N.T Moloney, the manager of Radio Rentals said the demand outweighed supply.
"A lot of schools were caught when the telecast was moved forward," he said. "And through the afternoon we had dozens of people on the footpaths watching sets in our display window."
At Wagga's Trinity High School, work ceased from 11am while fifth and sixth form students and their teachers watched the epic lunar walk.
An Education Department spokesman at Wagga said most schools managed to "find" at least one television receiver for their pupils.
Spacemen rest before return journey
Tuesday, July 22 - 1969
ASTRONAUTS Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin rested in spaceship Eagle on Tranquility Base today after their epic walk on the moon.
Mission control reported Neil Armstrong was resting and, perhaps dozing, but not sleeping.
Buzz Aldrin, with Armstrong on the moon, was not hooked up for biomedical information and no data was available to show whether he was sleeping.
Feat acclaimed praise pours in for moon heroes, Russia and China silent
Tuesday, July 22 - 1969
THE European Broadcasting Union today estimated some 600 million people or one fifth of the world population, watched live television pictures of man's first steps on the moon.
Forty-nine countries, including most of Eastern Europe received the pictures from the moon.
They were beamed to Europe via communication satellites over the Pacific and Indian oceans and ground stations in Japan and Britain.
Government leaders and newspapers all over the world hailed the feat.
One exception was Moscow which is being secretive about the mission of its own unmanned Luna 15 vehicle still orbiting the moon.
The Soviet News Agency, Tass, in contrast to the mammoth coverage elsewhere made only a brief mention of the american landing.
Peking has so far been completely silent.
Data error responsible for 'off-mark' landing
Tuesday, July 22 - 1969
THE moon landing was made four miles west of the aiming point, but well within the designated area.
An apparent error in some data fed into the craft's guidance computer from the earth was said to have accounted for the discrepancy.
Armstrong took manual control of the vehicle and guided it safety over a powder-filled crater to a smoother spot, the rocket engine stirring a cloud of moon dust during the final seconds of descent.
Then following a rest period, but four hours earlier than their original scheduled exit, the two astronauts made their dramatic entries on the moon's surface with Neil Armstrong as the pathfinder some 30 minutes ahead of Aldrin.
Armstrong and Aldrin picked up samples, set up an American flag and scientific instruments, all with evident ease before they returned to their vehicle.
Although their steps made no sounds on the airless surface of the moon, their running conversations with each other and the earth, more than 200,000 miles away, seemed to keep them from any sense of isolation.
Above them the sky was black, filled with stars brighter than they appear on earth, with the earth itself showing directly overhead.
They spoke of light and dark greys as the principal, but not the only colours. They said they found a purple rock.
"It's something like the Western Desert of the United States, but it's very pretty out here," Armstrong said. "It's hard for me to bend down," Armstrong added.
Armstrong walked around with his air pack on his back was clearly visible on television screens. Sometimes he appeared to be making small leaps in the lessened moon gravity.
Their mission all but over
Wednesday, July 23 - 1969
THREE American astronauts rocketed back towards earth today, just 11 hours after two of them rode their Eagle spaceship back from the scene of man's greatest adventure, the moon.
Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins fired Columbia's big rockets behind the moon and came out the other side fast and furious.
"We've got you coming home," said Mission Control.
"Tell them to open up the LRL doors" said a joyful Collins asking them to make ready the lunar landing laboratory where they will be kept in quarantine after they return to earth.
"That was a beautiful burn" Armstrong said. "They don't come any finer"
The rocket burned just a second under two and a half minutes and the boost in speed sent Columbia and her precious crew hurtling free of the moon's gravitational slide toward earth.
The astronauts are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean 1040 miles south-west of Hawaii on Thursday.
They will be taken immediately into quarantine, a 21 day period which began when they left the moon.
The big rocket burn was one of the last hurdles to returning to earth.
There are several optional periods to adjust their course along the way, but essentially the die is cast.
Yet, oddly there was little talk from the crew after the event.
Collins voice was fresh and cheerful but there was not much from the other astronauts the ones who landed on the moon.
Another moon landing planned for November
Wednesday, July 23 - 1969
THE United States will almost certainly make a second manned landing on the moon next November.
The Director of Apollo Lunar Landing Program Lt. General Samuel Phillips said this today at a Press briefing.
He said that following the successful return to earth next Thursday of the Apollo 11 astronauts, Apollo 12 would be given the go ahead for the second lunar landing mission in November.
He explained that Apollo 12, now being readied at Cape Kennedy, was prepared for launch in September "as a repeat attempt at a first lunar landing" had anything gone wrong with Apollo 11.
The next landing would probably be made on a site in one of the mares (seas) in the western half of the moon's visible face.
The Apollo 11 astronauts touched down in the sea of tranquility in the east-central part of the moons face.
Three more manned lunar landings are due to follow Apollo 12 probably at intervals of two to three months during 1970.
Each mission will explore a different area of the moon and they will carry increasingly sophisticated scientific apparatus designed to tell earth scientists more about earth's satellites.
Luna 15 crashes
Wednesday, July 23 - 1969
THE nine-day flight of the mystery Soviet space probe Luna 15 ended with a probable crash landing on the moon, the Associated Press reported.
The official news agency, Tass, announced last night that the unmanned space station completed its program of research in space near the moon and ended its mission with a landing.
However, it did not mention completion of its planned exploration of the moon which the original launch announcement on July 13 said it would carry out.
Such omissions are as close as the Soviet space program comes to admitting failure.
Details of the mission never were officially announced, but it was speculated that it would try to scoop-up a sample of moon soil and return it to earth thus taking some of the shine off the American man-on-the-moon triumph.
Collins, the forgotten man of Apollo 11
Wednesday, July 23 - 1969
HISTORY books do not record the "other men" - those who sailed with Columbus or went with Admiral Peary to the North Pole of Admiral Byrd to the South Pole.
Will Michael Collins be remembered, or forgotten, as the "other man" of the Apollo-11 moon landing mission?
Collins a personable 39-year-old Air Force Colonel who was born in Rome was dubbed the "forgotten man" and the "third man" long before the flight took him, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin to the moon began.
President Nixon, in "the most historic telephone call ever made" to Armstrong and Aldrin as they stood beside their moon landing ship yesterday, congratulated the lunar pioneers. He did not mention Collins, orbiting overhead in the command ship.
For nearly 28 hours, Collins flew alone in the command shop, Columbia, keeping it in a good order and doing work usually shared by three men.
Collins was always prepared to swoop down to attempt to rescue his crew members should their engines fail somewhere in the void above the moon.
Yet, at one point during the historic walk on the moon, the manned spacecraft centre neglected to relay the conversation of Armstrong and Aldrin to his ship.
"Thanks for putting me on relay," he observed when the signal finally reached him. "I was missing all the action."
Apollo speeding home right on target
Thursday, July 24 - 1969
THE space centre here reported tonight that all was well aboard the homeward-bound Apollo 11 moon ship.
Signals received by the tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, indicated the three astronauts were asleep in a 10-hour rest period, the space station reported.
The space capsule was streaking along at 3187 miles per hour, 159,584 miles from earth.
Late tonight, Apollo 11 was reported to be almost exactly on course.
Splash down successfully carried out
Friday, July 25 - 1969
AMERICA'S Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins, splashed safely down right on schedule.
The spacecraft landed upside down in the Pacific Ocean, but was upright some six minutes after splashdown.
Space centre in Houston could visually see the flowing re-entry of the moon ship - soaring down like a flaming meteor.
Cries of "there it is" greeted the Apollo 11's down range.
"There's the red ball," shouted excited viewers.
President Nixon donned binoculars to catch first sight of the bobbing capsule as recovery swimmers started into the water as The Hornet sped towards the spacecraft.
The hornet's deck was windswept and the sea has a swell.
"We are in fine shape," the moon men said in a message to The Hornet and the approaching recovery swimmers. The lead swimmer reported back to Hornet "the crew is excellent."
Priceless Apollo 11 cargo for world scientific analysis
Saturday, July 26 - 1969
AMERICA'S Apollo 11 crew returned safely aboard a US aircraft carrier today as officials here eagerly awaited the first samples of rock brought from the moon.
Aircraft carrying the priceless cargo - two boxes of rock samples gathered by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the lunar surface - were due to arrive here later today.
The samples, vacuum sealed in plastic and rolls of film taken by the astronauts, will be removed to a laboratory for decontamination and preliminary analysis.
Eventually the samples, will be shared out among 36 scientists and scientific groups around the world.
Taking no chance on the possibility of the spaceman bringing back some unknown moon bug that could contaminate the world, space officials slapped the three men into quarantine before they left their spacecraft.
The three Apollo 11 astronauts had their first earth meal today, aboard the U.S.S Hornet after their eight days of space fare.
The meal consisted of pancakes, cheese omelettes, bacon, roll and butter and jam.
Mayor's cable
Saturday, July 26 - 1969
THE Mayor of Wagga, Ald. R. J Harris, yesterday sent the following telegram to the American Embassy in Canberra: congratulations three astronauts on successful conclusion of momentous Apollo expedition and also to the people of the United states from the people of Wagga.
Scientist open first box of moon samples
Monday, July 28 - 1969
SCIENTISTS yesterday opened the first box of rock and other material picked up from the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin.
After the lid and some padding material were removed with his gloved hand, an operator standing outside the vacuum chamber containing the box took out a sheet of aluminium like foil designed to catch a sample of solar wind and then a bag containing the rock and rubble.
Before opening the bag, the operator, watched by a group of senior scientists at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory here, took out the first of two tubes used to obtain 100 gram samples of the soil just below the moon's surface.
Samples of the core tubes were to be rushed for immediate biological analysis.
The box opening was televised across the U.S
There were at least 15 rocks inside the bag. A scientist described them as "pretty massive and solid"
The rocks appeared to be "ginger brown, coca grey - more green than coca," he said.
All the fragments were coated with fine material. They appeared not too hard because they showed indentation marks. Some of the rocks seemed to have rounded corners.
One of the first tests would involve exposing a small piece of the rock to various gasses, including nitrogen, oxygen, water, vapour and carbon dioxide common elements of earth's atmosphere.
Some scientists had speculated that the moon rock would burst into spontaneous combustion once in contact with the oxygen in the air.