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which our three friends had died, and whose sacrifice carried a special meaning for us. Ed White had encouraged me to become an astronaut, so to me it was only a fitting tribute that Ed had come along to the moon with me. It also contained two medals commemorating Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov, who had perished, and Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Also in the pouch was a tiny silicon disk etched with goodwill messages from seventy-three nations, including the Soviet Union, our space rival and nemesis during the Cold War. Then there was a small gold pin in the shape of the olive branch of peace. We had thought long and hard to come up with this universal symbol of peace to include on our mission patch depicting the American eagle landing on the moon. It lent a greater meaning to our mission. I took a long last look at the pouch and tossed it onto the moon’s surface.

Neil brought over the rock boxes—we later discovered that we had collected an astounding 21.7 kilograms of lunar samples, about forty-seven and a half pounds—and we hoisted them up to the LM on our makeshift pulley system, and stored them in airtight containers. When Neil was safely inside, I closed the hatch to seal us from the harsh lunar environment.

Once inside, Neil and I helped each other to remove the heavy backpacks and hook up to the Eagles life-support systems. After de-pressurizing the Eagle one last time, we opened up the hatch again and threw out some trash and the backpacks to reduce our weight for liftoff. When the backpacks hit the ground, the people back at Mission Control could hear the impact through the seismometer. They actually said they could detect our prancing around while we were on the lunar surface. It was an exceptionally sensitive seismometer. The laser reflector we set up helps scientists to measure with nearly perfect accuracy the moon’s distance and movement in relation to the Earth. The solar foil that we brought back with us has enabled laboratory analysis of the sun’s electrically charged particles.

The science was brief, but it was very revealing, and of course the rocks were fascinating. Even though they were quickly collected, and were not documented with photographs because we were in such a hurry, they revealed that the moon was formed differently from how we had surmised beforehand. Following our mission, scientists concluded that a large object in the first billion years of the Earth’s existence hit the planet, blasting pieces of the Earth away, and one such piece became the moon.

THE MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION of the moon was no longer a stranger to mankind. We came to experience firsthand the utter desolation of the orb’s lifeless terrain. In contrast, the achievement realized by scientific enterprise and teamwork in designing and engineering the rockets that could send two men to land on the moon was magnificent. I could not help marveling that the very first footsteps we had taken, and the footprints we had left on the moon’s surface, would remain undisturbed for millions of years to come.

3

HOMEWARD

BOUND

IT WAS 1:11 A.M. (EDT) ON JULY 21, BY THE TIME NEIL AND I got back inside the LM and sealed the hatch. We had started this leg of the trip just before 9:00 a.m. the previous day, and we were exhausted.

The entire time Neil and I were exploring the moon, the third member of our crew, command module pilot Mike Collins, was orbiting the moon all by himself. No human being had ever spent so much time orbiting the moon alone. Making matters worse, during each trip around the far side of the moon, Mike was out of sight and out of radio contact. He was completely isolated, unable to talk with Neil or me on the moon, and unable to talk with anyone on Earth. Mike later commented about his orbital solitude, “I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.”

Besides getting us to and from the moon, Mike’s job was to conduct scientific observations and to photograph the lunar landscape. With each orbit around the moon, Mike took more photos, thousands in fact, that would