Apollo 11: Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong's defiant message to NASA
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53 years ago to this day, NASA made its mark on history and ended the space race as Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 was blasted into orbit by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as it took about four days to reach the Moon. The world celebrated as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, spending a little over two hours collecting rocks samples for scientists back on Earth to research.
But just as the pair prepared to return back to Eagle, Armstrong remembered a task he had been given by Apollo 11 scientist Professor Farouk El-Baz.
He had trained the astronauts to take photos of “targets of opportunity” outlined by NASA, which included finding out the thickness of the soil on the lunar surface.
Speaking to Science Digest, Prof El-Baz said: “[Armstrong] thought ‘my God, all of this training was great because I now know where in the hell am I pointing that camera, and what for’.
“So he himself was very enthusiastic about that actually and what he could collect would help us in all of the following Apollo missions.
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“So it was that important for them to do, and that became very clear also to figure out exactly what is the importance of their observations.”
According to Prof El-Baz, with mere minutes left before the spacecraft would begin its return to Earth, Neil Armstrong spotted a crater that was exactly what the researchers wanted.
He said: “Neil Armstrong did something for which we were forever appreciative.
“After they finished the job, they were all going back to the spacecraft because they’re going to lift off in one hour.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW ON THE SCIENCE DIGEST YOUTUBE CHANNEL HERE.
“Mr Armstrong had a camera and was going towards the spacecraft when he noticed a crater that was very clear to what we talked about for hours with him.
“We needed to know the thickness of the lunar soil, which we call the regulus before we hit solid rock.
“He asked ‘how do you figure that out?’ We told him to go a crate of such and such size and you will see that the bottom of the crater is solid rock.
“So then we know the thickness of the soil on the Moon, because we know that the thickness is at least one, maybe three to six metres deep because of the bombardment.
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“So instead of going to the spacecraft and going up, he headed with his camera towards the crater which was very far.
“He ran to it because of the time, stood at the edge of it, took a picture, and ran back.
“He knew that would tell us the thickness of lunar soil and it did.”
The photograph proved to be priceless for Prof El-Baz and his team.
At just 31 years old, Professor El-Baz became the secretary of the Lunar Landing Site Selection Committee for the Apollo programme.
Born in January 1938 in the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, he spent his early years in Damietta, an Egyptian port city north of the nation’s capital, Cairo.
It was here that his love of science and the natural world was born from the colourful rocks of Mokattam Mountain.
He later moved to Cairo with his family to study geology, chemistry, biology and mathematics, graduating with a bachelor of science in 1958.
Moving to the US, he gained a Masters degree followed by a PhD in geology, but a return to Egypt would see him try and fail to secure a position there.
He returned to the US in 1967 and interviewed successfully for Bellcomm, which provided scientific support to NASA’s headquarters, soon working his way into the Apollo programme.
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