Credit: Unsplash // Unsplash License
This photograph depicts Buzz Aldrin, the famous copilot of the Apollo 11 lunar mission and the second person to walk on the Moon. On the 20th of July, 1969, Buzz made world history alongside his copilots Neil Armstrong and Micheal Collins for successfully completing the first manned landings on the Moon. This photograph, shot by Armstrong, was taken on that very same day as they were flying somewhere in space within the Moon’s orbit. Behind Aldrin, the complex interior of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module can be seen.
The total elapsed time of the lunar mission, terminating once they had landed on Earth in the Pacific Ocean, was 195 hours, 18 minutes, and 35 seconds. Of that, 21 hours and 36 minutes were spent on the Moon’s surface. That leaves roughly 174 hours, or about seven days time, spent inside the Apollo 11 lunar module – perhaps a claustrophobic feat for some. Each day, they would eat pre-packaged, color-coded meals which included things like beef, vegetables, scalloped potatoes, and even Canadian bacon. When they weren’t fulfilling the various duties involved with maintaining a spacecraft, the rest of their spare time was spent filming TV segments for the people back on Earth, chatting with NASA personnel about the news, and – evidently – taking photographs of each other.
Once they had finished the mission and landed back on Earth, however, there still would be no respite from living in confined spaces. The astronauts had to perform a three-week-long quarantine inside of a modified travel trailer, in order to ascertain that they hadn’t brought any dangerous contaminations with them back from the Moon.
If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon, 20th July 1969!
