Flight operations
The mission’s spine: the two spacecraft and the arc that carried the crew down to the surface and back — the powered descent through the program alarms to “CONTACT LIGHT,” the stay/no-stay decisions, lift-off from Tranquility Base, rendezvous and docking with Columbia, and the trip home into quarantine. This map draws on the Flight Plan (the as-planned trajectory and timeline), the as-flown LM onboard checklists, the air-to-ground voice transcript (the arc as it was flown), the crew’s retrospective in the Technical Crew Debriefing, and the consolidated outcome in the Mission Report. For what happened between touchdown and lift-off, see The moonwalk.
Concepts
Section titled “Concepts”- Apollo 11 mission — overview: crew, vehicles, objectives, timeline.
- Lunar Module Eagle — the LM (LM‑5) that landed.
- Command and Service Module Columbia — the CSM (CSM‑107) and return vehicle.
- Apollo 11 nominal mission timeline — the Flight Plan’s GET-tagged “as-planned” schedule.
- Apollo 11 LM onboard checklists — the as-flown cockpit books: activation, the CSM-to-LM transfer list, stay/no-stay, EVA prep, and the hand-off to cue cards.
- Powered descent and landing — the 1202 alarms, “CONTACT LIGHT,” and “THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.”
- Tranquility Base (Landing Site 2) — the landing location in Mare Tranquillitatis.
- LROC imaging of the Apollo 11 landing site — the descent stage, experiment packages, and bootprint trails seen from orbit.
- Lunar ascent and rendezvous — lift-off from Tranquility Base, the climb to orbit, and rendezvous and docking with Columbia.
- Lunar quarantine and back-contamination — BIGs, MQF, LRL, and the 21-day quarantine.
- Crew health and biomedical performance on Apollo 11 — the lost rest period, the in-flight medical events, and postflight crew status.