Apollo 11

16 July 1969, 9:32 a.m.: Pad 39A

At 9:32 a.m. EDT on 16 July 1969, the 363-foot Saturn V designated AS-506 lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, carrying mission commander Neil Armstrong in the left couch, command module pilot Michael Collins, and lunar module pilot Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin.

Eleven minutes and forty-nine seconds later, the crew was in an approximately 103-nautical-mile circular Earth parking orbit — the Saturn V's stages had performed satisfactorily.

Three hours from Florida to a lunar trajectory

After spacecraft checks across one and a half Earth orbits, the S-IVB third stage — the same stage that had finished the climb to orbit — restarted. Translunar injection was complete 2 hours 50 minutes 13 seconds after liftoff.

Then came the transposition-and-docking maneuver: Collins separated the command module Columbia, turned it around, and docked with the lunar module Eagle, still housed in the spent stage's adapter. The joined spacecraft was ejected from the S-IVB and continued toward the Moon.

The trajectory proved accurate enough that three of the four scheduled midcourse corrections were unnecessary.

What 16 July was — and wasn't

This was the launch, not the landing: Armstrong and Aldrin put Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquility on 20 July, with Collins holding lunar orbit in Columbia, and the crew returned to Earth on 24 July.

At liftoff, none of that was assured. Apollo 11 left Pad 39A as an attempt at the first crewed lunar landing — the outcome stayed open for four more days.