Neil Armstrong commanded Apollo 11 and, with Buzz Aldrin, carried out the 1969-07-20 Apollo 11 Moon landing. As the Eagle (Apollo 11 Lunar Module) touched down at Tranquility Base, Armstrong radioed, “Houston, Tranquility Base, the Eagle has landed."1 Aldrin later said he regarded the line as a good one.2 Armstrong then became the first person to walk on the Moon, saying “That’s one small step for Man, one giant leap for Mankind” as he stepped onto the lunar surface, watched live by almost a billion people.3 He was followed by Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon.4 Two days before splashdown in the South Pacific, the crew, including Mike Collins, were still roughly halfway between the Earth and the Moon.5
During the descent, Armstrong took manual control of the Apollo Lunar Module and flew it over a crater surrounded by rocks to a landing site about 8 kilometres further downrange in the Tranquility Base area than intended.6 According to Dark Mission, official National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) history similarly records that he flew roughly 8 kilometres further west of the planned site, reportedly because of rocks.7 In doing so, Armstrong nearly exhausted the module’s fuel supply, coming within a few seconds of having to abort the landing and return to orbit.8 On the surface, he reported that neither he nor Aldrin could see any stars through the Eagle’s windows, though he could see the Earth through the overhead rendezvous window, and that Aldrin would attempt to observe stars through the ship’s “optics."9 That device was the Alignment Optical Telescope (AOT), used to determine the Lunar Module’s orientation relative to two specific stars.10
Before the first moonwalk, Aldrin performed a “communion ceremony” inside the Eagle.11 Armstrong did not share his enthusiasm, Aldrin later said, looking on with an expression of faint disdain.12 Richard C. Hoagland and Ken Johnston used transcripts of the Apollo 11 mission logs to reconstruct the post-landing procedures, determining that the ceremony took place 33 minutes after touchdown.13 According to Mike Bara, the biography First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong instead places the ceremony several hours after the communications break at that 33-minute mark, as Armstrong and Aldrin were preparing to suit up for the moonwalk.14
The television pictures of the landing broadcast to the public were dark, ghostly and low in contrast, a result of the Slow Scan Converter’s limitations.15 Images from the Zond 3 mission’s lunar flyby, 1965-07-20 had been acquired exactly four years before Armstrong and Aldrin’s first footsteps on the Moon.16 Hoagland has read Armstrong’s “one small step” remark as a coded acknowledgement, to a hidden audience, that the human race is a genetically related subset of a larger, more ancient “Mankind."17 At the 1994-07-20 Armstrong 25th anniversary Apollo 11 White House remarks, a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11, Armstrong appeared frustrated and gave a highly emotional address.18 He opened by comparing himself to a parrot repeating only what he had been told to say, and closed with a remark about “truth’s protective layers."19 Hoagland has asked whether that remark, urging young people to remove a “protective layer of truth,” referred to a clandestine reason behind Apollo’s creation and naming.20
On the outbound journey, an object was sighted near the spacecraft; Aldrin said that neither Armstrong nor Mike Collins believed it was anywhere near as far away as the S-IVB (Apollo 11 discarded third stage).21 Hoagland has speculated that Armstrong and Aldrin may have been pre-selected for the Apollo 11 mission for reasons he believes also applied to Alan Shepard and the 1961-05-05 Freedom 7 sub-orbital flight aboard Freedom 7.22 He has also argued that Aldrin and Armstrong were more logical choices than Gene Cernan to represent the Apollo past at a 2004 announcement, since they had taken part in similar NASA events, were better known to the public and had delivered generous and memorable remarks.23 Separately, Hoagland has said he believes Farouk El-Baz, Kenneth S. Kleinknecht and Wernher von Braun would have breathed a sigh of relief when the Apollo 11 images of Armstrong came back ghostly, dark and low in contrast.24
Hoagland has said that after the Apollo programme, Armstrong largely withdrew from public life and became reclusive.25 Armstrong was from Ohio, the same US state David Fravor is from.26 Fravor keeps a photograph of Armstrong riding in a car during a parade in Ohio Wapakoneta, because Armstrong’s parents lived near Fravor’s aunt and uncle, who attended.27 Fravor has dated his own ambition to fly to 1969, when he watched Armstrong walk on the Moon,28 aged four years and eleven months, during the Apollo 11 Moon landing.29 According to Dark Mission, there have also been persistent, unconfirmed rumours that Armstrong and Alan Shepard were Freemasons.30 Armstrong’s father was a Freemason.31