Here are 30 Interesting Apollo 11 facts.
1-5 Apollo 11 Facts
1. The astronauts of Apollo 11 couldn’t get life insurance, so they signed photos that their families could auction in case the landing went wrong. – Source
2. Jeff Bezos funded a team that searched the Atlantic Ocean for discarded NASA rockets. By 2013, the team salvaged two rockets. After careful inspection, the team realized they found part of the rockets used to carry Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon on Apollo 11. – Source
3. Preventing an abort of the Apollo 11 mission has been attributed to the work of Margaret Hamilton, the lead flight software designer for Project Apollo. She was 31 when the lunar module landed on the moon, running her code, and is credited for coining the term “software engineering.” – Source
4. NASA accidentally auctioned off for just $995 a bag that was used by Apollo 11 astronauts to collect the first lunar sample. When the buyer sent the bag to NASA for verification, the space agency realized its mistake and refused to return it. – Source
5. For the Apollo 11 moon landing conspiracy theory to be true, over 400,000 people would need to be part of the secret. – Source
6-10 Apollo 11 Facts
6. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, it only had about 25 seconds of fuel left. – Source
7. Thad Roberts was a former intern at NASA, who served a 6-year sentence in a federal prison after having sex with his girlfriend on a bed full of stolen moon rocks gathered from the Apollo 11 moon landing mission. – Source
8. During the English broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing Pink Floyd was the background music, jamming live in the BBC studios. – Source
9. The Flag that Apollo 11 astronauts planted on the moon was bought for $5.50 at Sears. – Source
10. Apollo 11 astronauts were quarantined for 21 days after returning from the moon to prepare for “the remote possibility that they are harboring unknown lunar organisms that might endanger life on earth“. – Source
11-15 Apollo 11 Facts
11. When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, they left behind a white pouch containing a silicon disc slightly bigger than a silver dollar. Inscribed in microscopic font on the disc are 73 messages, each from a different country, expressing wishes of goodwill and peace. – Source
12. Mission Control acknowledged a thousand-year-old Chinese myth when it asked the Apollo 11 crew to keep an eye out for a beautiful Chinese girl named Chang-O who lived on the moon and a large rabbit standing in the shade of a cinnamon tree. – Source
13. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has recovered Apollo 11’s engines from the ocean floor. – Source
14. For Apollo 11, there was a speech prepared just in case Neil and Buzz had to commit suicide on the moon. – Source
15. A NASA engineer named Jack Garman memorized all the possible error codes of Apollo 11 and saved the mission from being aborted! – Source
16-20 Apollo 11 Facts
16. In 1969, upon request from Richard Nixon, NASA made 250 display plaques for the 50 U.S. states, 135 countries, and the UN. Flags from all the countries and states were flown on board Apollo 11 to the moon and back and were gifted to each respective state along with fragments of the lunar surface. – Source
17. The Apollo 11 crew Niel Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins didn’t add their names to the mission patch because they wanted the patch to represent everyone involved with the mission. – Source
18. Astronaut Neil Armstrong was the only professor at the University of Cincinnati that did not have a doctorate, although he earned his Master’s by giving a presentation on aspects of the Apollo 11 Mission. – Source
19. The Apollo 11 space suits total assembly weighed 200lbs on Earth. – Source
20. When Apollo 11 was returning to Earth, the tracking station at Guam failed. To jury-rig repairs, the station director brought in his 10-year-old son, whose hands were small enough to get inside the faulty machinery and pack it full of grease. – Source
21-25 Apollo 11 Facts
21. Gemini & Apollo Astronaut Frank Borman was offered the chance to fly as commander of Apollo 11, the first moon landing, but decided to retire from NASA instead. He would have taken Armstrong’s place in history as the first man on the moon. – Source
22. Apollo 11 astronauts had to declare moon rocks through customs upon return to Earth. – Source
23. Apollo 11’s crew ate history’s first meal on the moon slightly ahead of schedule. The meal consisted of bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple grapefruit drink, and coffee. – Source
24. On the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the astronauts took with them 2 pieces of the original Wright Brothers plane as a homage to their predecessors. – Source
25. NASA erased the original transmitted footage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk because of a magnetic tape shortage in the following years. – Source
26-30 Apollo 11 Facts
26. The computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon had only 2 MHz of processing power, 4 KB of RAM, and 72 KB of ROM, less than that of a modern calculator. Minutes before landing, the processor became overloaded due to extra tasks performed by the landing radar. – Source
27. From launch to splashdown, the Apollo 11 mission took 195 hours and 18 minutes, of which 2 hours and 34 minutes were spent walking on the moon. – Source
28. The Apollo 11 astronauts were scheduled to have a sleep period immediately after the moon landing but it was postponed at the astronaut’s request because they wanted to walk on the lunar surface first. – Source
29. Jules Verne predicted the exact coordinates of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1865. – Source
30. The Apollo 11 astronauts set up a laser reflector to make precise measurements of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The average distance is 385,000km and the Moon is spiraling away from the Earth at a rate of the 3.8cm/year. – Source
