ONE SMALL STEP FROM OBLIVION

Fifty years after mankind’s greatest adventure . . . strap yourself into the Eagle for the most spectacular account you’ll ever read – minute by spine-tingling minute

AT 1.32pm GMT on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida at the start of its mission to put the first man on the moon. It was only 66 years since the Wright Brothers had made the first powered flight.

Once the Saturn V rocket had put the astronauts on course for the moon, Apollo 11 consisted of three spacecraft: the command module; the service module Columbia in which the crew travelled; and Eagle, the smaller lunar module which would carry two men to the surface of the moon. The crew was made up of its 38-year-old commander Neil Armstrong, 39-year-old Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, the pilot of Eagle (as a baby, his sister couldn’t pronounce ‘brother’ and called him ‘buzzer’), and former test pilot 38-year-old Michael Collins, whose job was to navigate and stay on board the command module. All three had written farewell letters to their wives in case they didn’t return.

SUNDAY, JULY 20 11.04AM GMT

‘APOLLO 11, Apollo 11. Good morning from the Black Team.’ Ronald Evans, the Capsule Communicator ( known as CapCom), gives the astronauts their wake-up call on the fifth day of the mission. They are some 240,000 miles away. Each team working the ten-hour shift at Mission Control (the NASA nerve centre monitoring every aspect of Apollo 11) has a colour and the CapCom of each one is the only person who speaks directly to Armstrong and his crew. CapCom is always a fellow astronaut. It takes 30 seconds for a sleepy Michael Collins to answer with a groggy: ‘Morning, Houston.’ The crew lift up the shades on the command module’s windows that keep the constant sunshine out when they need to sleep. Today is the most important so far. If all goes to plan, in a few hours Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin will be on the moon. Four hundred thousand people employed by NASA and 4 per cent of U.S. government spending have got them to this point. As they orbit the moon, Columbia is flying with the lunar module on