39 Years ...

Today is the 39th anniversary of the first moon landing by Armstrong and Aldrin in the "Eagle" LEM, at 4:17:40 EDT during the Apollo 11 mission.

Click here for a wav file of the landing announcement.

The "first step" and the moon walk started late that night.

Somewhere in my Dad's slide box is the picture I took of the TV screen at about the moment he stepped off of the pad onto the moon. It remains unforgettable today.

The video clip above is really nice in that it shows Aldrin coming down the ladder and testing the drop (and 36"+ vertical leap in 1/6 gravity) between the bottom step and the ground at about the 2:00 mark. Watching this, it would seem that Armstrong had already finished the same test before the 0:30 mark despite the audio that comes after it: "OK, I just checked ah gettin back up to that first step." The audio and video are not correctly correlated at this point in the video clip. (See below for correct audio.) The sync is correct later in this video clip.

There is another clip available on YouTube that was not AFAIK broadcast. This is looking down the ladder from (inside?) the LEM and starts about a minute earlier than the clip shown above. This audio is different, since it includes a message to Aldrin about adjusting the aperture on this camera (the "sequence camera"), which improves the image quality at 1:40 into the clip. This clip also shows that the audio in the clip shown up above has been editted, because the comment about seeing Armstrong and his testing the first step is earlier, before the top clip even starts (you can see him go down, up, then finally jump down onto the pad at about 1:14, which is where the other clip starts).