It was November 19, 1969, and U.S. astronaut Alan Bean was taking part in human history’s second-ever moonwalk. Standing on the lunar surface, he flipped a page of the mission checklist affixed to his wrist, and there it was: a heavenly body he didn’t expect—Playboy’s Miss December 1968, in a Santa hat and nothing else.

On the Apollo 12 mission, Bean and mission commander Charles “Pete” Conrad had 3.5-inch-square, spiral-bound booklets of 30-plus pages each, strapped above their spacesuits’ left gloves. 

Cryptic, acronym-laden, short-hand instructions covered everything from setting up the solar wind spectrometer to sampling the lunar surface. But two and a half hours into Bean’s and Conrad’s lunar walk, it became evident that their checklists had been… augmented.

Read more: https://www.playboy.com/read/entertainment-culture/the-playmates-who-visited-the-moon

On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first Moonwalk.

In early July 1969, Bob Wayne, then a 21-year-old camera operator for the WIMA TV station, was given a job – camp outside the home of Stephen and Viola Armstrong.

‘Once we started doing all the work around their house, through their yard and in the July heat, the excitement disappeared and it became just a difficult job that we had to do right,’ Bob tells Metro.

One day, Viola stepped outside carrying a tray of lemonade glasses, telling Bob and the other reporters she was worried about them frying in the heat.

‘Viola didn’t know whether she would ever see her son again, and yet she was still concerned about the total strangers who were outside working around her house,’ Bob says. ‘That explained to me how he [Neil] became the man that he was.’

While the astronauts Neil, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were making history above, Walter Fruland was also playing his part on the ground.

Walter was the NASA protocol officer assigned to support Neil’s wife, Janet, and their two sons during the moon landing, his cousin, Gary, tells Metro. He lived with them in their home in El Lago, Texas.

Walter saw the boys sitting ‘goggle-eyed’ on the sofa in front of their boxy TV as the bug-shaped Eagle module touched down on the moon on July 20, 1969. ‘Neil and Janet’s boys were so excited about their dad but too young to realise what the immensity of the moment meant to humanity,’ Gary says.

Ten years after the Apollo 11 mission, Bob posted Stephen and Viola a cutting of his article in the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune about his time working on the Armstrongs’ porch. Bob never thought the Armstrongs would reply, let alone remember him.

‘I just wanted to tell her how much I remembered,’ he says, ‘even 10 years later.’ But to his shock, Viola did remember him. She replied with a handwritten card, which he shared with Metro.

‘I remember you, you seemed like a fine young gentleman,’ she wrote, ‘and you wrote a very nice article. ‘I shall keep it always.’

Bob and Gary’s stories came to light after MyHeritage, a genealogy company, encouraged Americans to share tales of their family playing a part, however small, in the country’s 250-year-long history.

📷: My Heritage, Bob Wayne
📷: My Heritage, Homecoming parade for Neil Armstrong in Wapakoneta, Ohio
📷: My Heritage, From left to right: Walter, Gary and his wife

You can read the full article here: https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/20/neil-armstrongs-mum-gave-lemonade-son-blasting-off-moon-29075526/

Footage of the first moon landing in July 1969 from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface,as seen from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module piloted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The footage was filmed on the 16mm DAC Camera from Buzz Aldrin's Lunar Module window and has been upscaled, interpolated from 12 FPS to 50 FPS, and synced to mission audio by Moonpans.

The video captures the drama of the first moon landing including the 1202 alarms and low fuel warnings

Original footage from NASA's Apollo Flight Journal 

Audio from NASA's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

I found this amazing pdf about the controls of the command module and the file name and page numbers show that this is only a section from a larger file/book which I can't find. Can anyone help, I'd love to read the rest.

I've been diving deeper into Apollo history, and the Lunar Rover turned out to be far more interesting than I expected.

I put together a short documentary explaining why it looked unusual and how it worked on the Moon. I'd really appreciate any feedback. As always, thank you for being so supportive.

57 years ago today, Apollo 11 launched. The first crewed mission to the Lunar surface.

Something I thought was interesting that I found in his papers.

Just in case you have some spare change …

I have been reading a lot about the space program this summer and I’m curious if Skylab was always going to be after the Apollo program ended or would there have been further Apollo missions after 20?

I always assumed the Apollo Lunar Module’s lower section looked gold because it was wrapped in some kind of metallic gold foil.

Nope.

The distinctive amber-gold material on the descent stage was primarily aluminized Kapton—a lightweight polyimide film used as part of the spacecraft’s thermal insulation system. It reflected heat and helped protect the module from brutal temperature swings in space and on the lunar surface. The “gold” look was functional engineering, not decoration or precious metal.

The Lunar Module also used other materials in its thermal blankets depending on the location and expected temperatures, including aluminized Mylar and, in hotter areas, Inconel-based protection. So the famous gold wrapping was really part of a carefully engineered, multilayer thermal-control system.

A NASA technical report on Apollo thermal protection is a useful primary-source rabbit hole if you enjoy this sort of thing: NASA Technical Note D-7564. The Smithsonian’s Lunar Module collection entry also lists aluminized Mylar and aluminized Kapton among the materials used on an Apollo LM.

Tiny correction to a very common mental image: the Moon lander wasn’t dressed in gold. It was dressed for survival.

This Beach 18 belonged to Frank Borman, crew member of Apollo 8

In the movie “Apollo 13”, Jim Lovell is shown being given the option of accepting Jack Swigert as Ken Mattingly’s backup for CM pilot, or pushing all three to a later mission. “Jim, if you hold out for Ken, you will not be on Apollo 13.”

Is this the way it went down, or was it drama added for the sake of the movie? If Lovell had said, “Fine, move us down,” who would have flown 13? Swigert gets to go to the moon in any case, John Young was the backup commander, but what was NASA going to do for an LMP? Charlie Duke’s measles diagnosis was the original reason for the kerfluffle. Replacing him with Fred Haise reintroduces the same issue of crew cohesion. Would Young have been okay with Haise, or anyone else?

While I’m sure NASA would have preferred to keep on schedule, but would a month delay have been possible? Artemis II was scheduled for launch in February, then March, and finally April when hardware problems were encountered. Or was the idea of backup crew members always to be able to swap in one member if necessary, not the whole crew, in order to avoid such delays?

I’ve always wondered exactly what the noise is, so I’ll ask here.

Any time I view footage of an Apollo mission, I noticed that immediately preceding any audible words in a radio transmission from Earth, a flat high pitched beep is heard, the message is spoken, and then the beep is heard again when the transmission ends.

What is that beep called and why does it occur from Earth based radio calls to the Apollo spacecraft?

Thanks in advance!

https://youtu.be/WffXYD3VOIM

This video shows mankinds last seconds on the lunar surface, as Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt prepare to liftoff from the Moon. It is made from several sources of footage, 16mm onboard the Lunar Module, live TV from the Lunar Rover and in the second part of the video, 16mm film from the Command Module in lunar orbit as Ron Evans captures the LM rising up to rendezvous and dock.

The 16mm footage has been upscaled and interpolated to 60 FPS with audio and music by Moonpans

Original Footage Source: Apollo Flight Journal
Original Audio Source: Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

One of my main responsibilities was processing weather data from 35 mm film to IBM magnetic tape format and transmitting the data reel to Houston Control Center. After our shift, on launch day we were allowed to remain on property to watch the lift off. I stopped on the road side of the access near the Cocoa guard check point station and sat alone on my 1969 Yamaha 250 motorcycle and witnessed the launch. Afterward as I passed through the guard station to go home the streets sides were packed full of cars and vehicles of all sorts. At first people applauded as I passed through. After it wasn't obvious anymore that I was part of the launch team, I just became part of the crowd. It was... and still is the proudest moment of my life.