Small steps, giant leaps
While the world awaited the historic landing of Apollo 11, Judith Watson was camped beside a radio longing for astronaut Neil Armstrong to touch the Moon.
Watson was 12 at the time, but still regards the feat as man’s greatest achievement.
It has been half a century since Armstrong and engineer Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to stand on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
The mission, which bore the hope of a nation and the fascination of the world, had launched four days earlier, on July 16, from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre, which was named after the slain president who had set America on the goal of landing man on the Moon before the decade was out.
Watson, now in her 60s, remembered running from her intermediate school in Whanganui, where she still lives, although she works in Manawatu¯ , to her father’s pharmacy down the road to catch the moment, which in New Zealand was shortly before 3pm on July 21.
‘‘There were no customers ... Town was dead because they were all around the radio.’’
She has kept several newspapers from the months surrounding the event and her favourite edition was one month after the landing, showing a photograph of footprints on the Moon’s surface.
Among her collection are souvenir booklets detailing the decade-long mission with several photographs of the expedition.
‘‘Every time we shifted, it’s not something I wanted to throw out and I’m so glad I kept them. I know there have been incredible scientific improvements since, but for some reason it still blows my mind to think that man stood on the Moon.’’
During the live broadcast, Watson stood outside in disbelief as she stared at the Moon, where Armstrong and Aldrin were said to be collecting more than 21 kilograms of lunar material to
bring back to Earth.
‘‘It was just mindboggling.’’ She was ‘‘hurt’’ by those who denied the landing ever took place, saying their comments were an insult to the 4000 Nasa employees who dedicated the best part of 10 years to create history.
‘‘When you know all the dangerous things that could have happened, you think: ‘Gosh, how brave?’’’
Manawatu¯ astronomer Ian Cooper said the mission was the catalyst for his love of space.
‘‘They put a whole lot of science into the thing. It was a big proposition. We were pushing the envelope on the technology we had.
‘‘We were brought up with a lot of science fiction, so it was easy to dream and get carried away with this sort of thing and then to see it happen ... we were just blown away with the whole concept.’’
He was at school when the headmaster broadcast the radio feed over the school intercom system.
Cooper said it was important we celebrated scientific milestones, which we often took for granted.
The conquest was also the first time New Zealand newspapers had received instantaneous photographs, with the Manawatu¯ Evening Standard writing: ‘‘The speed of modern newspaper communication had its most graphic illustration today.’’
Pictures of the spacecraft on the Moon were received by teleprinter in all New Zealand newspaper offices less than a minute after the event.
In Christchurch, astronomers maintained a close watch over the Moon’s surface through a 16-inch reflector telescope, hoping to catch a glimpse of the spacecraft as it descended, the Standard wrote.
The South Island observatory was one of 100 around the world casting a close eye over the feat.