Entry and Splashdown: Apollo 11, The Untold Story

Two hours after rendezvous, the command/service module jettisoned the lunar module, then the main engine fired to send Apollo 11 on a trajectory for home. Here, after a three-day coast, the crew jettisons the service module too and, buckled down in the command module, blazes into the thin atmosphere of Earth. They splash down in the Pacific Ocean, where they are immediately airlifted into quarantine aboard the USS Hornet while Mission Control celebrates.

By Jennifer Bogo
May 27, 2009 12:00 AM

* Chuck Deiterich, retrofire officer (RETRO), Black Team, Mission Control: About 16 hours before re-entry the recovery guys came up and said, "Hey, we've got bad weather where you're going." It was too late to change the time of flight, to let the Earth rotate underneath you, so what we did was fly an entry range. You could actually fly a different trajectory through the atmosphere and land [further] downrange.

* H. David Reed, flight dynamics officer (FIDO), Green Team, Mission Control: Coming back from the moon, you're coming in a lot hotter than ever before--at 36,000 feet per second. In Earth orbit, it's 25,000.

* Chris Kraft, director of flight operations, Mission Control: Because the velocity is so high, if you tried to come in directly, the heat-shield requirements would be too great. So what we did was get them into the atmosphere, skip it out to kill off some of the velocity, and then bring it back in again. That made the total heat pulse on the heat shield of the spacecraft considerably lower.

* Milt Windler, flight director (FLIGHT), Black Team, Mission Control: It was [still] so hot that the heat shield was abrading and there was a big ionization shield all around them. It prevents communication until [the command module] slows down enough for that to stop.

* Clancy Hatleberg, pararescue-man, underwater demolition team 11, U.S. Navy: The USS Hornet had steamed all night long with the helicopters, the two recovery teams and myself. The sea states were the highest we had ever encountered in any of the simulated exercises that we had performed in preparation.

* Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, Apollo 11: There's a big solidness to the force as you're coming into the atmosphere, and it's gradually decelerating the spacecraft. You could sense a g before it really showed up on the indicator, and by then it's pretty firm. It's pushing you toward the back of the couch and down.

* Hatleberg: I was in helicopter 66. I remember looking out of the cockpit, and I could see we were on the outskirts of a storm: The sun was rising up above the clouds, but it was dark down below. It was sort of like being caught between night and day. Then all of a sudden I saw this streak coming through the upper atmosphere. It looked like a meteor. And then three chutes opened up.

Audio: Visual Contact and Splashdown

Rescue Swimmers Reach the Command Module


Recovery of Apollo 11 From the Pacific Ocean


Video: Diver Is Dropped Near Apollo 11

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* Aldrin: It was a moderate jolt. Then there's a bit of a sway once you're hanging there. When you're actually on the water, there's a firmness that didn't exist before; there's an intellectual knowledge of being supported by something.

* Hatleberg: Once everything was in place, I jumped into the raft and they lowered the decontamination bottles and the [biological isolation garments] and the mitt that I used to wash down the command module and the astronauts. I gave a thumbs-up to the helicopter when the decontamination was complete and 66 came into position and lowered a net.

* Sy Liebergot, electrical, environmental and communications officer (EECOM), Black Team, Mission Control: We didn't consider them recovered until we saw the astronauts removed from the command module in the ocean by helicopter and step out on the deck of the aircraft carrier. Only then did we celebrate. We were steely-eyed missilemen. That was our deal.

Video: USS Hornet Recovers the Command Module

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Celebration After Splashdown


Audio: The Crew Enters Quarantine and Cigars Are Lit

* Bruce McCandless, astronaut (CAPCOM), Green Team, Mission Control: The whole mission was about as close to perfect as you can get with three human beings onboard and an unexplored terrain.

* George Mueller, associate administrator for manned spaceflight, NASA: Looking back, it was really a whole lot of people working on the same problem, making sure the piece that they had would do what it was supposed to do when it was supposed to do it--10 million pieces and 400,000 people. And every one of those people was very, very dedicated.

* Liebergot: We were young, and we were fearless and, after all, nobody had ever told us young engineers that we couldn't successfully land humans on another planet. So we did it.

Apollo 11 Turns 40
Launch Day
To the Moon
Landing Day
Lunar Exploration
The Trip Home

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