No Dream Is Too High - Buzz Aldrin Page 0,3

above the Moon’s surface like a slow-moving helicopter, Neil finally spied what appeared to be a safe landing spot. When we finally touched down, we had only 15 to 20 seconds of fuel remaining!

Neil and I breathed a little easier but we couldn’t relax. We shook hands—we had done it; we had landed on the Moon! But this was no time for a victory party; we quickly went through our flight checklist. It was absolutely essential that we not allow our emotions to overwhelm us or cloud our thinking as we followed our planned procedures in case we had to make a hasty departure from the Moon, using an entirely different rocket engine from the one we’d used for our descent. Finally, I paused long enough to glance out the window at the black velvet sky and the ash gray, pockmarked terrain on which we had landed. With our engines shut down, we were surrounded by a celestial silence; the only sound I could hear was my own breathing.

Giving voice to a surprise that only he; Mike; our fellow astronaut Charlie Duke, who was serving as our spacecraft or capsule communicator (CAPCOM); and I knew about, Neil spoke the words “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Nobody else on Earth knew that we were going to call our little portion of the Moon “Tranquility Base,” and even Charlie seemed slightly caught off guard.

“Roger, Twan …” he started to mispronounce the name, and then corrected himself. “Tranquility.”

Although few people were familiar with Tranquility Base, everyone in the world understood the significance of the latter part of Neil’s calm declaration. “The Eagle has landed.” Human beings were on the Moon!

ONE OF MY ASSIGNMENTS while on the surface was to literally kick up some Moon dust and observe the dust’s “scuff/cohesion/adhesion” qualities. Because there is no air on the Moon, and only one-sixth of the gravity we are accustomed to on Earth, each kick of my boot sent Moon dust spraying out from my boot and falling back to the surface in perfect little semicircles, appearing almost like a handheld fan.

I was intrigued by the Moon dust, so while Neil was collecting rock samples, I borrowed the camera. I looked around the lunar surface for an undisturbed area where we had not walked so I could take a shot of a footprint. I found a good location and took a picture of the gray surface. Then I carefully pressed my foot down right in the center of the flat area I had photographed—sort of a “before” and an “after” shot. Barring obliteration by an asteroid or future human disturbance, I realized that the single, solitary footprint showing impressions made by the treads of my boot would remain intact on the lunar surface for thousands of years, convincing future explorers that man had indeed walked on the Moon.

But the more I looked at the footprint, it struck me, Hmm, that isolated print is rather lonely looking. So I had another idea. I’m going to put my foot down on the surface and then pull my boot up and away from the footprint, but only slightly, still keeping my boot in the frame.

The resulting photograph of my foot and footprint on the Moon became another famous piece of history, a symbol of human beings’ passion to explore, and a powerful reminder that the sky is not the limit, because there are footprints on the Moon. Those bootprint photos are among the few that I took while on the Moon.

When Neil and I got back in the Eagle, we took off our heavy backpacks, and along with other unnecessary items such as our boots and our specially designed, 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera, we placed them in garbage bags and tossed them out on the lunar surface. Those items are still on the Moon today. In retrospect, we probably should have tossed out our helmets rather than the boots—that might have had more historic significance—and the Hasselblad camera; the helmets were much heavier, but there was always the possibility that we might still need them. Perhaps future space environmentalists will find our castoffs and criticize us for so inconsiderately discarding our “trash,” but we dared not take off with one ounce more than planned, and we had already picked up some weight with the more than 45 pounds of rocks we had gathered on the Moon to take back to Earth for study.

We left a commemorative plaque on the lunar surface. Dated July 1969, the plaque