ENTRY AND SPLASHDOWN

As the Green Team concluded its last shift of the mission, McCandless wished the astronauts “Godspeed”. The White Team was to work a long shift, during the latter part of which the crew would sleep, until the Maroon Team arrived for the re-entry phase. Duke pointed out that owing to thunderstorms in the recovery zone, the aim point would be relocated eastward to where conditions were better. The main risk in the original recovery zone was air turbulence. Just as aircraft avoid such ‘air’, so too must a returning capsule. The command module’s aerodynamic lift was to be used to extend the entry 215 nautical miles farther downrange towards Hawaii. The forecast for the new recovery zone was for scattered cloud, 16-to-24-knot winds, 2-to-4-foot waves and a 5-to-7-foot swell, excellent visibility, and, most importantly, little or no turbulence.

‘‘I’ll wish you good night from the White Team for the last time,’’ announced Duke when it was time for the crew to retire for their final sleep period. ‘‘It has been a pleasure working with you guys. It was a beautiful show from all three of you. We appreciate it very much, and we’ll see you when you get out of the LRL.’’ At that time, Apollo 11 was 74,906 nautical miles from Earth and approaching at 6,954 feet per second. As soon as the telemetry indicated that the astronauts were asleep, the flight controllers teased Duke by projecting onto one of the Eidophor screens a cartoon about his misidentification of the Moon for Earth on the previous day’s telecast. It showed the spacecraft midway between the Moon and Earth with the words, ‘Neil, I just spotted a continent on the Moon’ and ‘Charlie, the camera’s on Earth now’.

To start flight day 9, Thursday, 24 July, Kranz handed over to Windler, who was to handle the final phase of the historic mission. It was decided to allow the crew an extra hour’s sleep, but at 189:30, almost 8 am in Houston, Armstrong called to ask whether they would require to make midcourse correction 7 and was told that their trajectory was satisfactory. Apollo 11 was now 40,961 nautical miles from Earth, had accelerated to 9,671 feet per second, and was less than 6 hours from atmospheric entry.

“While you’re eating your breakfast there,” Evans called, “I have the Maroon Bugle with the morning news. President Nixon surprised your wives with a phone call from San Francisco just before he boarded a plane to fly out to USS Hornet to meet you. They were very touched by your television broadcast yesterday; Jan and Pat watched from Mission Control here. Wally Schirra has been elected to a 5-year term on the board of trustees of the Detroit Institute of Technology. He’ll serve on the Institute’s development committee. Air Canada says it has taken over 2,300 reservations for flights to the Moon in the last 5 days. It might be noted that more than 100 were by men for their mothers in law! And finally, it appears that rather than killing romantic songs about the Moon, you’ve inspired hundreds of song writers. Nashville, Tennessee, which probably houses the largest collection of recording companies and song publishers in the country, reports being flooded by Moon songs. Some will make it. The song at the top of the best sellers list this week is, ‘In the year 2525’.’’

“Thank you, very much, Ron,’’ Armstrong acknowledged.

Meanwhile, in the Aldrin home, Joan’s father, Michael Archer, was preparing the champagne for the splashdown party – although the best vintage had been put aside for when the astronauts emerged from quarantine. The shooting of fireworks was illegal in Texas other than on the Fourth of July, Christmas and New Year, but the local fire department had issued a waiver to permit a display in the back yard after splashdown.

With about 3 hours to go, Deke Slayton and the backup crew of Lovell, Anders and Haise joined Evans at the CapCom console.

‘‘This is Jim, Mike,’’ called Lovell. ‘‘The backup crew is still standing by. I just want to remind you that the most difficult part of your mission is going to be after recovery.’’ He was referring to the quarantine.

‘‘Well, we’re looking forward to all parts of it,’’ Collins replied.

‘‘Please don’t sneeze,’’ Lovell implored. If, after having been away for so long, they were to show any symptoms at all upon their return, then this would cause the ever-worrying medics to presume immediately that they had contracted ‘lunar flu’.

‘‘Keep the mice healthy,’’ Collins said. There were hundreds of white mice in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, and if even one of them were to show an unusual symptom on being exposed to lunar material, it would surely result in calls for the quarantine to be extended.

As Earth’s gravity continued to draw them in, the planet loomed with amazing rapidity. ‘‘The Earth is really getting bigger up here and, of course, we see it as a crescent. We’ve been taking pictures. We have four exposures left and then we’ll pack the camera,’’ Collins pointed out.

Finally ready, Collins strapped into the left couch, Armstrong in the centre and Aldrin on the right. They were to fly re-entry in ‘shirt sleeves’, their pressure suits having been stowed under their couches.

‘‘This is your friendly backup CMP,’’ Anders called. ‘‘Have a good trip, and do remember to come in BEF.’’ The acronym BEF stood for ‘blunt end forward’ – he was reminding them to enter the atmosphere with the heat shield on the base of the capsule facing the direction of travel.

“You better believe it,” Collins replied. They were triple-checking every step of the checklist. In preparing to jettison the service module, he mused, “That old service module has taken good care of us; it’s been a champ.” He made a visual check of the horizon, “The horizon check passes; it’s right on the money.’’ As the spacecraft entered Earth’s shadow, he noted the time, “The Sun’s going down on schedule.’’ In view of the predicted surface winds and prevailing sea state, each astronaut took an anti-motion-sickness pill. At 3,000 nautical miles from Earth, Apollo 11 was travelling at 26,685 feet per second. Over the ensuing 20 minutes it would be accelerated by almost 10,000 feet per second. As on departing Earth, its trajectory and speed now enabled it to pass through the van Allen belts without significant exposure to radiation. Because the trajectory was west-to-east, the final treat for the Carnarvon station of the Manned Space Flight Network was to monitor the approach. The service module was jettisoned at an altitude of 1,288 nautical miles and a speed of 31,232 feet per second. Its trajectory would cause it to burn up like a meteor, with perhaps just a few small fragments falling into the ocean. Collins used the command module’s own thrusters to face its heat shield in the direction of travel. At launch, Columbia had weighed 65,000 pounds, but most of that had been propellant. Alone now, the mass of the command module was just 11,000 pounds.

A plot of altitude versus range to splashdown for the nominal entry profile.

“You’re looking mighty fine from here. You’re cleared for landing,” Evans confirmed

“Roger,” Collins acknowledged. “Gear’s down and locked.’’

Continuing the aviation theme, Windler advised the Recovery officer, “We’re on final for the carrier.’’

With 7 minutes to go to atmospheric entry, the spacecraft was at an altitude of 800 nautical miles and had accelerated to 33,000 feet per second. Early in the development of the Apollo program, it was decided to use a ‘double dip’ profile for atmospheric entry on a high-speed return from cislunar space so as to minimise the heating effects. After the entry interface at 400,000 feet, the capsule was to make a shallow penetration of the atmosphere to shed a significant fraction of its energy, then utilise its limited aerodynamic lift to climb back to pursue a ‘skip’ prior to descent and landing. The nominal entry corridor for the approach was inclined 6.5 degrees below horizontal. If the capsule were to come in significantly shallower, it would bounce off the atmosphere like a stone skimming on a pond, and the astronauts would die when their consumables ran out some hours later. If the entry was centred in this corridor, the peak deceleration would be 6.5 g, increasing with the angle. If they were to enter too steeply the capsule would burn up. As a result of the midcourse correction on the transearth coast the angle was -6.48 degrees. The speed at the entry interface was 36,237 feet per second; for a spacecraft returning from low orbit it would have been only 25,000 feet per second. The computer navigated the ‘extended’ 1,500-nautical-mile profile by adjusting the exit angle from the ‘dip’ in order to lengthen the ‘skip’, with Collins monitoring, ready to intervene in the event of a problem.

‘‘You’ll be going over the hill shortly. You’re looking mighty fine to us,’’ said Evans.

‘‘See you later,’’ Armstrong replied. If things were to go seriously pear-shaped as a result of the failure of part of the entry system, this would be the last thing heard from the crew.

First contact with the atmosphere occurred over the Solomon Islands, east of Australia. The 0.05-g light illuminated at about 300,000 feet to indicate that air drag was beginning to decelerate the capsule. Aldrin had placed the 16-millimetre Maurer camera in his window to document their luminescent ‘wake’, which initially was an inner core of orange/yellow, surrounded by patches of violet, blue and green, beyond which was the black of space.

As the capsule compressed the tenuous upper atmosphere, it formed a shock wave that rapidly raised the temperature of the heat shield to 2,870°C. An Air Force Airborne Lightweight Optical Tracker System KC-135 was on station to photograph the re-entry. Free electrons in the ionised gas prevented radio communications, but a tape was recording telemetry and crew comments. The black-out was expected to last no more than 3 minutes. As the wake intensified, the glow illuminated the cabin like daylight, even though the re-entry was in Earth’s shadow. Having been weightless, the deceleration was punishing, but it did not last long. The black out ended on time. Collins was relieved when their velocity fell below orbital, because it meant that they were guaranteed to come down

MAIN

CHUTES
(REEFED)

SPLASH DOWN VELOCITIES:

3 CHUTES – 31 FT/SEC 2 CHUTES – 36 FT7 SEC

MAIN CHUTES RELEASED

AFTER TOUCHDOWN

The Apollo spacecraft’s Earth Landing System.

somewhere. The recovery force was at the nominal aiming point of 169°W, 13°N, some 850 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu.

At 24,000 feet the forward heat shield was jettisoned to expose the apparatus of the Earth landing system. There was a jolt as mortars deployed the two reefed 16.5- foot-diameter drogue parachutes. Houston made no attempt to communicate, preferring to leave the ‘air’ clear for the recovery forces. An aircraft reported that it had S-Band contact. Once the drogues had stabilised and decelerated the capsule to a rate of descent at which it was safe to deploy the main parachutes, the drogues were jettisoned and mortars deployed three pilot chutes which, in turn, pulled out the 83- foot-diameter main chutes that were reefed to produce a gradual inflation in three stages, reaching full inflation as the capsule descended through 10,500 feet; only two chutes were necessary for a water landing, the third represented redundancy.

Leading the nine-ship recovery force was the 30,000-ton aircraft carrier USS Hornet. It had been commissioned in 1943, served in the Pacific, was modified after the war, and then served off Korea and Vietnam. On Wednesday President Nixon had flown Air Force One from San Francisco to Hawaii, and then on to Johnston Island, where he flew by helicopter to the communications ship, USS Arlington, which sailed overnight to join the recovery force, finally transferring to Hornet an hour before Apollo 11 was due to arrive.

‘‘Apollo 11. This is Hornet,” called the ship just after hearing a sonic boom.

‘‘Hello, Hornet,” replied Armstrong. ‘‘This is Apollo 11 reading you loud and clear.’’

One of the Sea King helicopters reported, ‘‘Swim One has a visual dead ahead, about a mile.’’

‘‘300 feet,’’ announced Armstrong, reporting the altimeter reading.

‘‘Roger. You’re looking real good,’’ replied Swim One.

The capsule struck the water at 30 feet per second. The couches were mounted together on a frame set on shock absorbers in order to cushion the impact, but the three men grunted at the sudden deceleration.

‘‘Splashdown!’’ announced Swim One.

The capsule was 15 nautical miles from Hornet. The ‘extended’ entry profile put it 40 seconds behind the flight plan. It was 7.51 am in the local (Hawaiian) time zone. As sunrise was 10 minutes away, the illumination was poor for television.

The capsule was a truncated cone about 10 feet tall and 13 feet in diameter across its base. Its centre of gravity in water meant that it would readily flip over into an apex-down orientation. In view of the 18-knot winds, immediately after splash Aldrin was to insert a circuit breaker alongside his right elbow, and Collins was then to throw a switch to jettison the parachutes to preclude their dragging the capsule over. Armstrong had bet Collins a glass of beer that he would not make it. The shock of impact forced Aldrin’s poised hand away from the panel, and by the time he had relocated and pushed in the breaker the wind had caught the parachutes and had flipped the capsule over, leaving the crew hanging in their straps. With a distinct sense of ‘up’, but one with dark green water in the windows, the cabin suddenly became a very unfamiliar place! The waves were just 3 to 6 feet, but to the astronauts the sea state felt much rougher, and they endeavoured to resist the onset of sea

If the CM becomes inverted after splashdown, its offset centre of mass combined with strategic flooding and the inflation of flotation bags enables it to be righted.

sickness while a trio of air bags distributed around the apex inflated to right the capsule – a process that took 8 minutes. As soon as they could, each man took a second anti-motion-sickness pill. As soon as the capsule had flipped upright and exposed its antennas, Armstrong reported to the Air Boss, circling in one of the helicopters, “Everyone inside is okay. Our checklist is complete. Awaiting the swimmers.”

QUARANTINE

In July 1964 a conference organised by the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences highlighted the potential hazard of ‘back contamination’ to Earth from lunar missions, and urged the development of preventative measures. On 8 December NASA asked the Board to submit recommendations. On 23 May 1965 the Life Sciences Committee said that astronauts returning from the Moon must be quarantined for at least three weeks; this period being chosen because it exceeded the incubation of most terrestrial germs. On 14 June Robert R. Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, set up a committee chaired by Edwin Samfield to oversee the design of the Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory, and on 1 November formed the Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory Office as an interim organisational unit. On 13 May 1966 George E. Mueller, Director of the Office of Manned Space Flight, renamed the facility the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL). On 28 July, Gilruth was authorised to issue the contract for its construction. The three-storey building was to have a suite of offices, a vault to store lunar material in vacuum conditions, a laboratory to process samples in isolation chambers, and a human quarantine facility. On 1 August Persa R. Bell was appointed as director. The installation and testing of the internal systems continued through 1968. A review in November 1968 prompted some changes, as did a 30-day simulation in March 1969, but on 5 June the LRL was declared operational. Although Bell saw the likelihood of anything harmful being returned from the Moon as ‘‘probably one in one-hundred-billion’’,
the consequences of an unfortunate outcome might be dire. Michael Crichton’s novel The Andromeda Strain, published in 1969 and a Book Club recommendation for June, served only to heighten public awareness.6 On the basis that any bugs that could survive on the Moon would thrive on Earth, a 21-day quarantine starting the day of the moonwalk was a compromise between those who thought quarantine was unnecessary and those who argued for many months.

However, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and for quarantine this was the opening of the spacecraft hatch after splashdown. An option would have been for the crew to remain in the capsule until it was hoisted onto a recovery ship which carried the requisite isolation facilities, but as there was no guarantee that the capsule would splash down in proximity to a such a ship, and it was impracticable for the crew to remain in the capsule for a lengthy period awaiting its arrival, it was decided to develop a Biological Isolation Garment, known as a BIG, to be worn during the normal recovery procedure.

After a member of Underwater Demolition Team 11 jumped from Sea King tail number 64, call sign ‘Swim Two’, and attached a sea anchor to prevent the capsule from drifting, three more members of the team attached a flotation collar to stabilise it against the swell, emplaced two large rafts that were tied to the collar, and then inflated another raft, boarded it and moved off upwind of the capsule. At this point, 25-year-old Lieutenant Clancey Hatleberg from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, jumped into the water with four BIGs, one for each of the astronauts and one for himself. Joseph P. Kerwin, a physician recruited as a scientist-astronaut in 1965, had assisted in the design of the grey-green rubberised suit. It had a zipper running diagonally from lower left to upper right, and a hood incorporating a mask with an air filtration system projecting from the chin. Once in the raft located immediately in front of the hatch, Hatleberg put on his suit. Having written his checklist inside his face mask using a grease pencil (‘VENTS TAPE INFLATE’) he reached up to the apex of the capsule to confirm that the air vent valves were closed – otherwise the biological isolation would be compromised. He then removed the tape from the filters of the garments intended for the crew. Finally, he inflated the attached life preservers. Since the hatch was capable of being opened regardless of pressure differential, the internal pressure had been set lower than ambient in order to ensure that when (some 30 minutes after splash) Hatleberg opened the hatch to pass in the suits the airflow would be inwards to limit the scope for ‘bugs’ to escape. He immediately closed the hatch and washed it down with a disinfectant. While Aldrin donned his suit on the right couch, first Armstrong and then Collins did so in the lower equipment bay, and despite the capsule being stabilised by the flotation collar they were distinctly wobbly on their feet. Hatleberg communicated with them by way of hand-signals through the hatch window. When they were ready, the crew scrambled out as rapidly as possible, first Armstrong, then Collins and finally Aldrin, and Hatleberg closed the hatch and again disinfected it. As the suit had no facility for communication, no

The widely acclaimed film of Crichton’s novel was not released until 1971.

words were spoken, but the entire procedure had been rehearsed many times in training. Furthermore, because the suits had no provision for ventilation, the men soon overheated and their face masks misted over, reducing their already limited visibility.[46] All four men wiped each other using cloths saturated with chemicals that were presumed to be lethal to lunar bugs. The disinfecting kit was then weighted and tossed into the sea. Despite the suits having been designed for isolation, in-seeping water made the rubber sticky and uncomfortable. The astronauts moved to the adjacent raft to await retrieval. With the Sun having risen and Hornet now less than 1 mile away, the television coverage of the recovery operation was excellent. Sea King tail number 66, call sign ‘Recovery One’, hoisted the astronauts on board one at a time (the order of their doing so being unclear, since the suits were identical). Earlier in the space program a simple ‘horse collar’ harness through which an astronaut slipped his arms had been employed, but this device had been superseded by a Billy Pugh net. Named after its inventor, this was a plastic and metal basket, open at one side, into which a man could climb for the hoist to the helicopter. Once the astronauts were clear, the swimmers returned in their raft, disinfected themselves, sank the decontamination raft, and prepared the capsule to be hoisted onto the ship.

The astronauts were greeted in the helicopter by flight surgeon Bill Carpentier, who deflated their life preservers. To reacclimatise to Earth gravity, Collins did a series of deep knee bends. Aldrin joined him. Armstrong did not. The flight to the Hornet lasted about 10 minutes. Watching from the island structure were President Nixon, Secretary of State William Rogers, NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine and Frank Borman. As it landed, the ship’s band was playing on deck. Unlike their predecessors, the Apollo 11 crew remained in the helicopter and rode the elevator down to the hangar deck. They detached the mission patches from their BIGs and gave them to the aircraft crew as souvenirs. When the door was opened, Armstrong led the way out, holding onto the rail of the steps for stability. Despite their misted face masks, they were able to see sufficiently well to make their way unaided the short distance to the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF), on the way waving to the dimly perceived crowd. By this time, the Mission Operations Control Room was all flags and cigars, many of the VIPs having left the viewing gallery in order to join the celebrations on the main floor, which was standing-room only. While the telecast from Hornet was shown on one Eidophor, another screen displayed an Apollo 11

patch and ‘Task Accomplished….. July 1969’. The MQF was a 9-foot-wide 35-foot-

long gleaming aluminium commercial travel trailer, minus its wheels, that had been modified for NASA by Airstream and American Standard to provide biological containment. One end was hinged to provide the main door. John K. Hirasaki, the engineer in charge of the facility, welcomed the astronauts and Carpentier on board, then joined them. After the astronauts had doffed their rubber suits, Carpentier

The astronauts walk from the recovery helicopter to the MQF.

‘Task Accomplished’ is displayed in the Mission Operations Control Room.

checked their blood pressure, temperature, respiration and heart rate. Having taken turns to shower in the utility compartment at the opposite end of the trailer, they donned blue flight suits bearing an Apollo 11 mission patch, a NASA ‘meat ball’ insignia, and a white pin-on-badge proclaiming ‘HORNET PLUS THREE’. They then gathered at the door and drew back the curtain of the full-width window, above which was mounted a sign with ‘HORNET + 3’.

As Nixon made his appearance the band struck up Ruffles and Flourishes. At the microphone in front of the MQF door, with television cameras running, Nixon, welcomed the crew home – his reputation for cold aloofness yielding to genuine delight. After the initial banter, he said, ‘‘I was thinking as you came down and we knew it was a success, it’s only been eight days – just a week, a long week – but this is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation because, as a result of what has happened this week, the world is bigger infinitely, the world has never been closer together before. And we just thank you for that. And I only hope that all of us in government, all of us in America – that as a result of what you’ve done – we can do our jobs a little better. We can reach for the stars, just as you have reached so far for the stars.’’8 The astronauts, somewhat bewildered, could only say ‘Yessir’ at the appropriate times.

The welcome over, the astronauts drew their curtain and were given additional medical tests, including riding an ergometer for 18 minutes each while hooked up to monitoring equipment and breathing through a tube to analyse their exhalation, in order to check their physical condition; this program was to be repeated every 24 hours to monitor their recovery. By the time the medicals were over, Nixon’s party had left Hornet by helicopter. Later, the capsule was retrieved and installed alongside the MQF. When a plastic tunnel had been strung from Columbia’s hatch to the MQF, Hirasaki retrieved the rock boxes, film and other essential items and passed them out through a decontamination airlock for air-freight to Houston. The US Navy was ‘dry’, but when Carpentier pointed out that by their watches (set on Houston time) it was drinking time, they broke out bottles of scotch, bourbon and gin. The trailer had a galley, and a lounge with six comfortable seats and a table. Hirasaki cooked steak with baked potato. Everyone then retired to the two-level bunks on each side of the main compartment, slept for 9 hours, and awoke late. Meanwhile, the rock boxes, the film, and the blood samples drawn immediately upon the astronauts’ arrival were divided into two packages and flown to Hawaii by separate helicopters, just in case one was forced to ditch in transit. A Customs official cleared them for immediate entry to US territory. They were then loaded onto separate Air Force C-141 Starlifter transports for passage to the mainland. Paine accompanied the first consignment.

Meanwhile, the astronauts watched recorded Apollo 11 television coverage. On seeing the crowds of people clustered to watch the moonwalk, Aldrin observed to his

In saying the Apollo 11 mission had been ‘‘the greatest week since the Creation’’, Nixon drew criticism in the press for neglecting the significance of Jesus Christ!

commander, “Neil, we missed the whole thing!” To help to ‘wind down’, Armstrong and Collins undertook a marathon game of gin rummy. On their second evening, Collins visited the capsule and used a pencil to inscribe on the wall above the sextant: ‘‘Spacecraft 107 – alias Apollo 11 – alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP.’’

On the morning of the third day, Saturday, 26 July, 55 hours after splashdown, Hornet steamed into Pearl Harbor, near Honolulu, Hawaii. During a private visit to the MQF, Admiral John Sidney McCain Jr, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, told the astronauts they were ‘‘lucky sons of bitches’’. ‘‘I would have given anything to go [to the Moon] with you.’’ The ship’s crane hoisted the MQF onto a flat-bed truck. With what seemed to be half the population of Honolulu lining the route, the truck took over an hour to drive the 10 miles to Hickham Field, where the MQF was loaded on board a C-141 for a non-stop 6-hour flight to Ellington Air Force Base. On the way, the astronauts signed a stack of pictures that were to be given to people they thought would appreciate a memento, and then they napped. On landing at Ellington just after local midnight there was an hour’s delay before the MQF was able to be offloaded – it took three attempts, prompting Carpentier to observe wryly, ‘‘They can send men safely to the Moon and back, but they can’t get ’em off the damned airplane!’’ There were welcoming speeches by Louie Welch (the Mayor of Houston) and Robert Gilruth, and an opportunity for their wives to speak over an intercom – all of which was televised, of course. At 2.30 am, after a 1-hour drive, the truck delivered the MQF to the ‘garage’ of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, and once this was sealed the astronauts were finally able to leave the utilitarian trailer and take up residence in the living quarters of the quarantine area, which included a kitchen, a dining room, a recreation room, separate bedrooms for each of the astronauts, and a dormitory for everyone else. Ten people were already in quarantine, including two cooks (also described as a chief steward and steward), a doctor serving as a laboratory specialist, a Public Affairs Officer and a NASA photographer. The astronauts’ quarantine had actually begun at the moment Eagle landed on the Moon, so they would require to spend only the next 14 days in the LRL. The people who were to be confined with them had already spent 21 days in isolation to enable any bugs they might be carrying to be identified, and thereby preclude these spreading and being mistaken for lunar infections.

The film was to be subjected to 48 hours’ decontamination in an autoclave. Because a test of this device several days previously had ruined a film, the first Apollo 11 film to be processed was one taken in space, rather than on the lunar surface. If this were to be ruined in processing, the other film would be retained for the full quarantine period and then processed in the normal manner. But all was well. When Life magazine got its copy of the Hasselblad film of the moonwalk, its editors set out to find the best photograph of Armstrong to put on the cover of a ‘special issue’, and were astonished to find that there was not even one.[47] Thus, although

Armstrong entered the history books as the first man to set foot on the lunar surface, the iconic image of the mission was of Aldrin.

The main technical task for the astronauts in quarantine was a debriefing, in which they methodically relived the various phases of the mission. In addition to taped and filmed interviews through a window with colleagues in a room beyond the quarantine area, each man wrote detailed reports. When it was transcribed, the oral debriefing ran to some 500 single-spaced pages. To jog their memories, they had their annotated flight plans, and were able to view the pictures and movies. Some of the debriefing was conducted by men assigned to future missions, seeking tips about landing, such as how visibility in the hovering phase was impaired by the dust displaced by the engine plume. On 29 July, Armstrong and Aldrin were told where Eagle had actually landed: the 16-millimetre movie taken by the camera mounted in Aldrin’s window enabled Tranquility Base to be located at 0°4T15"N, 23°25’45"E – almost precisely where the geologists had placed it.[48] [49] Although the debriefing was time-consuming, time was the one commodity that the astronauts had in abundance. Armstrong welcomed the seclusion, but his crewmates found it tedious. They were able to receive visits from their families, but only through the glass partition, and on 5 August Armstrong celebrated his birthday in quarantine. ft came as no surprise to be informed that, on orders from the White House, they were to spend the next several months undertaking national and international ‘goodwill’ tours.

Deke Slayton visited one day and suggested that they give some consideration to whether they wished to remain in the ‘rotation’ for future missions. Although at this point NASA hoped to fly missions through to Apollo 20, to rotate through backup to prime would be tedious, and besides there were other pilots eager for missions.11 Armstrong, however, was in the same ‘trap’ as John Glenn, who, on the suggestion of the White House, had been grounded after his Mercury mission on the basis that, as a national icon, he was too valuable to risk on another flight. During a T-38 flight from Houston to the Cape in May, Collins had said to Duke that if Apollo 11 was successful he intended to retire. On telling his wife Pat, she had urged him to refrain from making this official until after the mission, just in case he should have a change of heart. fn fact, several days before launch Slayton had asked Collins if he would like to rotate through Apollo 14 backup for the prospect of commanding Apollo 17, but he replied that he would end with Apollo 11. Having walked on the Moon, there was little chance of Aldrin being allowed to go again. ff he wished to fly again this would have to be to visit the Skylab space station, which was scheduled for launch no earlier than 1972.[50] Thus, by the end of quarantine all three were ready to stand

down. They were not alone. Of the Apollo 8 crew, only Jim Lovell was still active, and having backed up Apollo 11 he was in line to command Apollo 14. Of the Apollo 9 crew, Dave Scott was backing up Apollo 12 in the expectation of commanding Apollo 15. Of the Apollo 10 crew, both John Young and Gene Cernan were in the rotation and hoping for their own commands.

As soon as the lunar material arrived in the LRL, samples were pulverised and ‘fed’ to germ-free mice, birds, fish, insects and plants in an effort to induce some sort of a reaction. As Collins had joked prior to the mission when this procedure was explained to the crew, ‘‘Let’s hope none of those mice die!’’ The merest hint of an infection would have caused the quarantine period to be extended, potentially in an open-ended manner. Indeed, on observing that Aldrin’s core temperature was now consistently several degrees higher than normal, some of the medics suggested that he should remain in isolation until it could be explained, but Carpentier rejected this, and Berry concurred.13 As none of the mice developed any symptoms, at 9 pm on Sunday, 10 August, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were released and driven away in NASA staff cars, each chased by a television truck, and on arriving home were met by reporters. The solitude of quarantine was over, and they were public property again.