The secrets of Apollo 11

Exactly 50 years ago, humankind achieved one of the greatest technical feats of all time. Less than nine years after President Kennedy had set the goal of landing a man on the surface of the Moon and returning him safely to Earth, NASA achieved that most astonishing aim on 20 July 1969.

Those intervening years had been a white-knuckle ride. Beginning with Alan Shepard’s 15-minute suborbital Mercury flight in 1961, NASA progressed through a series of milestones in their mission to reach the Moon. There was the loss of a Mercury capsule and the near-drowning of its pilot Gus Grissom; John Glenn’s re-entry with a retrorocket still attached to his Friendship 7 capsule; a slew of hugely successful Gemini missions, including one that almost span out of control, potentially threatening the life of the astronaut who in 1969 would take that first historic step and then four fully flown Apollo missions: two in low-Earth orbit, two that orbited the Moon and only one to test the full system. NASA had to endure the catastrophic loss of Grissom and his two crew mates, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, in 1967 in Apollo 1’s tragic fire on the launch pad, but the space agency had resolved to carry on, completely redesigning the Lunar Command Module and carrying out major changes to the Lunar Landing Module – the LEM as it was known – in that short space of time.

Amid triumph and tragedy, on