It¡¯s been 48 years since humanity put the first man on the Moon, on July 20, 1969. When Neil Armstrong took "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Despite being nearly half a century since the monumental event, NASA, ISRO, and other space agencies have yet to match the sheer awesomeness of how the mission went down. Here are a few things you should know about why the Apollo 11 mission was a milestone in humanity¡¯s journey to the final frontier.
Armstrong takes his first step onto the surface of the Moon - NASA
The lunar module (LM) NASA used for the Apollo 11 mission was technically the first spacecraft designed to operate somewhere other than Earth or in our orbit. It had an automated guidance system, though the astronauts on board could take over, as Neil Armstrong did during the mission in order to steer it away from the rock field it was headed towards. All of this despite it being only the third flight the LM had ever made with human passengers on board.
Buzz Aldrin practicing on the Command Module simulator on Earth - NASA
These computers were built for the Apollo space program, with one going into the Command Module of the ship, and one into the Lunar Module. These provided both computation and electronic interfaces to pilot the craft, as well as for guidance and navigation. That being said, the AGC actually had a performance capability close to the personal home computers we saw a decade later, like the Apple II, and Commodore PET. It had approximately 64KB of memory and operated at 0.043MHz. Yes, that means the smartphone in your pocket is significantly more powerful than the computers that put man on the Moon.
Margaret Hamilton and the code she wrote for the Apollo 11 guidance system - MIT
When Margaret Hamilton was put in charge of programming the Apollo 11's onboard flight systems in 1965, she had a lot of obstacles to overcome. Not only was this in a time when a woman in a technical job was likely to be scoffed at, it was also years before companies Microsoft even came to be. As such, there was no software of any sort to program the computers on the spaceship. Instead, Hamilton and her team spent hours making and compiling punch cards that would literally be hardwired into the Apollo 11¡¯s computer ¨C a copper wire threaded through a magnetic ring would mean a 1 in binary (called core rope memory), while the empty ring would mean a zero.
Hamilton was the pioneer of software engineering before the field existed, and she did it while caring for her four-year-old daughter in the NASA offices, because she couldn¡¯t find a babysitter.
(L-R) Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. - NASA
NASA¡¯s spacesuits these days are highly technical constructions, keeping the wearers safe during all aspects of their mission. During the Apollo 11 mission however, astronauts had to instead have a different suit to match each occasion. The mission required 15 suits, with a total of nine suits for Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, and the rest for a backup crew. One suit was for flight, one for training, and the last as a reserve.
The innermost layer of the suit was like a one-piece pajama, which had embedded water cooling tubes to stop the astronauts from boiling in their outfits while they worked. Then came several layers of nylon, Kapton, glass-fiber cloth, Mylar and Teflon, which served to pressurise the suit, as well as protect the wearer from radiation and space debris. The fingers on the gloves also used silicone rubber in order to let the astronauts ¡°feel¡± things on the lunar surface.
As humanity prepares to land with both its feet on the surface of Mars, let's not forget what it took us to reach the Moon. Cheers!