(NASA)Īnd oh, do I wish I had met Neil Armstrong. I always wish I’d asked him about that before he died, in December 2017.īruce McCandless floats in space, with the Earth in the background. (McNair would perish on that same ship two years later.) McCandless seems so very alone, floating far above the world, and yet through this image, we are with him. The people watching him were the astronauts Vance D. The photo of McCandless’s leap is haunting and beautiful in its own right, but one reason it’s so appealing, at least to me, is because it’s also evocative of the people McCandless left behind. “It might have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a giant leap for me,” he said. While wearing a jetpack during a mission of the space shuttle Challenger, McCandless ventured 320 feet from the shuttle without a tether. Fifteen years later, McCandless would set a record for the greatest distance an astronaut has ever traveled from a spaceship. McCandless was famously peeved that Armstrong hadn’t shared what he’d planned to say when his boots touched lunar soil. There is one person I regret never asking about that frisson, because he is the subject of the only other image that holds this sort of power, and he was part of Apollo 11, too.īruce McCandless served as mission control and capsule communications, “Capcom,” during Armstrong and Aldrin’s moonwalk. It is rare, even in an exercise as mind-warping as space exploration, to experience a moment like this. A human presence was welcoming another visitor.Īrmstrong's photo of the landing area on the lunar surface, and one leg of the lunar module. The human mind was inhabiting the moon, rather than projecting onto it. Now one of us was there, on the inside looking out. Until this photo, every image of the moon, in our minds and in our cameras, had been from the other vantage point-from far away, looking up. It’s the perspective of there, of the already arrived. With this perspective, everything changes. But to me this photo reflects an even more consequential shift. Armstrong’s small step was momentous, and I have watched the grainy video footage of his descent more times than I can remember. I have often thought about the weird profundity of this scene. And in this moment, all three are on the moon-the vantage point is so clearly from this other place that it places the viewer there, too, for the first time. The moment really exists among three parties: the subject, the photographer, and the audience. A photo’s existence implies the photographer’s, too. “A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it,” as the early-20th-century photographer Edward Steichen put it. Someone else was already there, is unseen but known to the viewer, and we are seeing this moment as he saw it. This picture brims with meaning: Someone took it. He is on the cusp of transforming the moon into a place that humans, plural, have walked upon. He’s holding on, letting go, almost there, leg out, just about to leap down.
Aldrin is moving he is descending-he is alighting. It’s not posed it’s in no way a passive picture. Read: Bound for the moon: Apollo 11 preparation in photos But the picture of Buzz descending to the moon’s surface is the most compelling, in my view.
That distinction probably belongs to the one of him saluting the flag, or the one of him facing the camera, legs bowed open, with Armstrong’s reflection in his helmet visor. It’s not the most famous photo from Apollo 11, nor from Buzz’s brief jaunt on the moon. Aldrin clambered through the Eagle’s hatch and onto a ladder with its last rung hanging about three feet above the lunar surface. Once Armstrong had some moon bits safely stowed in his pocket, Aldrin finally prepared to get out and join Armstrong on the surface. He was so caught up in the first moments of moon-based photography that mission controllers in Houston had to keep reminding him to collect some moon samples, in case he and Buzz Aldrin had to evacuate suddenly. He pivoted to take a panorama, showing the terrain where he’d touched down as the spacecraft burned precious fuel. Neil Armstrong made his famous one small step, and then started unpacking the most important thing the astronauts brought with them: a 70-mm color camera.Īrmstrong’s first shot, per the instructions taped to his wrist cuff, showed the landing area, including one leg of the lunar lander Eagle.
PICTURE OF THE FIRST MAN ON THE MOON SERIES
(NASA)Įditor’ s Note: This article is part of a series reflecting on the Apollo 11 mission, 50 years later.įor 18 minutes and maybe 19 seconds, only one human being had ever set foot on the surface of the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin steps off the ladder from the lunar module and onto the moon.
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