First Step to the Future
He will always be remembered as the man who inspired people to reach for the stars
It was late evening of July 20, 1969, when we turned up the hostel radio. I was an engineering student at BITS, Pilani. I still remember the feverish excitement that gripped us from July 16 when Apollo 11, the US space rocket, took off from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Neil Armstrong and his team of astronauts, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, were to land on moon, for the first time in human history. We listened with rapt attention when Armstrong declared: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
His death on Saturday, August 25, is a moment to salute the romance of space science that Apollo 11 unleashed. It has changed forever the way we look at our planet Earth and its satellite, the moon.
Standing on powdery moondust, Armstrong put up his thumb, shut one eye and found his thumb blotting out the Earth. “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth,” he said later. “I felt very, very small.” But behind that humbling realisation stood a giant truth: The effort to explore the universe united mankind in technology and knowledge. Each moon mission, about 110 till date, provided more confidence to take on bolder projects.
The US, Russia, China, Japan and India are competing right now to understand the mystery of the universe. Russia is getting ready to set up a manned base in moon by 2025. China’s lunar spacecraft, the Chang’e series launched in 2007, have created the most precise 3D maps of the moon’s surface. After the success of India’s first moon mission, ChandrayaanI, the country is now gearing up for Chandrayaan- II by 2014- 15.
On July 20, 1969, Collins orbited the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Sea of Tranquility, an expanse of molten lava formed some 100,000 years ago on the moon. Compared to the moon’s ragged craters, it was a smooth surface to land on. The duo walked around the moon for twoand- a- half hours, took 166 photographs, stuffed their pockets with 47 pounds of rock samples, plan- ted the US Stars and Stripes flag and a plaque on the moon’s surface: “We came in peace for all mankind.”
US President John F. Kennedy in a 1961 speech openly explained the rationale of going to the moon: To “catch up to and overtake” the USSR, which had launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, in 1957, and sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin to space in 1961. America had responded by initiating its manned exploration of the moon, the Apollo missions, that succeeded six times and ended with Apollo 17 in 1972, the longest flight which got the largest sample haul from moon.
By the time India started on Chandrayaan- I, making satellites was routine for the Indian Space Research Organisation. We were interested in new lunar science: Gravitational field, surface composition to new methods of sending up spacecraft. Getting into lunar orbit is big technology, but we did it with our own knowledge.
Forty- three years after Apollo 11, questions remain unanswered: We always see the same side of the moon. Even today the far side remains a mystery; the moon is thought to be a great source of helium- 3, the next- generation fuel for nuclear reactors. But our knowledge on it is theoretical; the lunar poles, which have water and sunlight 24 hours, need to be explored further. Famously reclusive, Armstrong always avoided talking about himself. He never revealed how he felt on his way to the moon. Given the piercing sun rays, did he worry about the cooling system of his suit, or of the spacecraft? Was he sure of landing on moon or of coming back safely to Earth?
The moon doesn’t have atmosphere. If you kick up dust in moon, it takes any geometric shape. Armstrong thought the dust went out in the shape of a “rose petal” when he kicked at it. The true worth of the man lies in this scientific imagination.