July 20, 2014: 45th Anniversary of Lunar Landing

Forty-five years ago, three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins went into space to be the first to walk on the moon. They left planet Earth on July 16, 1969 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Apollo 11 spacecraft and arrived on the moon four days later on July 20, 1969.

It was Neil Armstrong that became the first human to set foot on the moon. Newsweek  magazine published a 27-page story entitled The Moon Age. Buzz Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. The astronauts attached a plaque to the Eagle that read: Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said Neil Armstrong as he became the first human to scuff the surface of the moon with his foot. At 10:56 p.m. EDT Sunday night, as perhaps 1 billion earth men and women watched and listened, the civilian commander of Apollo 11 stood on the 37-inch-diameter landing pad of his Eagle-shaped gear and pressed it into the Sea of Tranquility. He was a ghostly white figure, moving in buoyant ungravity on a powdery plain some 240,000 miles away—and yet as close as the TV set across the room, as real as a recurrent dream. For with him walked all men who have ever lived or who are yet to live.

Newsweek offers the original 353-page flight plan of the Apollo 11 mission and a key to some of the technical language in the document.