Apollo 11 anniversary: How the Eagle landed

FAN Editor

It’s a moment enshrined in history: When the lunar module from Apollo 11 landed on the moon 45 years ago, Neil Armstrong declared: “The Eagle has landed.”

Watch: Apollo 11 launches, July 16, 1969

But in a 2007 interview with CBS News’ Ed Bradley, Armstrong recalled that the Eagle was heading to a landing in a very large crater. That would have been a disaster for the mission, so Armstrong had to think fast and override the autopilot so that he could set the lander down in a safer spot, the Sea of Tranquility.

Bradley brought Armstrong and famed CBS anchor Walter Cronkite together to remember the very dramatic moments of one week in July 1969. Watch it above.

Free America Network Articles

Leave a Reply

Next Post

The 12 men who walked on the moon

Gene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 mission to the moon, poses in front of an American flag and the crew’s lunar rover. NASA’s Apollo space program stretched from 1961 to 1972, and culminated in a dozen men walking on the moon. Gene Cernan, who died Jan. 16, 2016, was […]