Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

We're over Smyth's Sea right now.

Michael Collins (CMP)

We're about 88 degrees east, I would estimate.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

We show you about south of the—southwest of the crater Jansky right now.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Smyth Sea doesn't look much like a sea. It—The area which is devoid of craters, of which there's not very much, is sort of a hilly looking area. It's not like the maria at all.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We copy that about the sea, and it looks like you were just giving us a view of the crater Neper, the large crater on the left, and Jansky on the right.

Michael Collins (CMP)

We think you're close, but no cigar.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

11, this is Houston. Would you care to comment on some of these craters as we go by?

Neil Armstrong (CDR)

Roger. We're approaching the approach path to ignition. This is equivalent to 13 minutes before ignition, and we're at about 83 degrees, I guess—83 degrees east. That correspond to location you're holding there presently?

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We're showing your present position as about 77—76 degrees east looking back towards the east.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Hey, you should be looking back at Smyth Sea now.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Houston, what you're seeing in the middle of the screen now is the crater Schubert and Gilbert U is in the center right now; and this comes up at about—a little over 12 minutes before power decent. Instead of me looking—Instead of looking back at it, we'd be looking straight down at it in descent.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

And we show you at an altitude now of about 110 miles; and, of course, you'll be considerably lower at the initiation of powered descent.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Okay, Houston. Look at register 3 on the DSKY data. This data is increasing toward my desired of 315; and I'll let the hand controller alone here, and I'll bet you it reverses itself.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger, 11. We're watching the DSKY now, and it's still coming in beautifully on the TV.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Okay. There's—on the right side of the screen at the present time, there's a triple crater with—with a small crater between the first and second; and the one at the bottom of the screen is Schubert Y. Zoom in; it does have a central peak in Schubert Y. Actually, several of them, and you can observe those plus the rim craters at the bottom of your screen.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We're seeing the central peak quite clearly now.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Okay. We're zooming in now on a crater called Schubert N. Schubert N, very conical inside walls and the bottom appears to be nearly flat.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Look at data on the DSKY. It's stabilized and is holding steady now.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Looking out the window I can see a number of small craters on the bottom of Schubert N.

Michael Collins (CMP)

We're coming up on the Foaming Sea where I'll be doing some P22 marking on a crater of my choice, name of crater, Camp.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Okay. We'll be watching for Neper.

Michael Collins (CMP)

And notice register 3 has reversed itself, and it's heading back the other way now without any pitch thruster firing.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger, Mike. We confirm that you've changed the direction of your pitch rate.

Michael Collins (CMP)

— The tendency seems to be to pull the LM down toward the center of the Moon there as in a gravity gradient experiment.

Michael Collins (CMP)

It may have something to do with MASSCON's or it may —

Michael Collins (CMP)

It may have something to do with MASSCON's or it may just be the peculiarity of the DSKY display.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Okay. We've observed the behavior of your DSKY, and I think we've got the data here to work on it. Let us grind around a little while on it, and we'll report back to you, probably in a REV or two.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Okay. Well, in the meantime, I'm going to pitch down toward 315.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Three craters—three horizontal craters that you now have in the field of view are immediately underneath the ground track. The right hand is the largest crater that you see, Dubiago P.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We concur on the identification of that crater.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

And we show you coming up on landmark Alfa 1 here shortly.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Roger. Mike's having his first look at Alfa 1 at the present time.

Michael Collins (CMP)

Yea. It's a very bright crater. It's not a large one but an extremely bright one. It looks like a very recent and, I would guess, impact crater with rays streaming out in all directions which should make my—Correction—the Foaming Sea easy to see coming up on it now. Crater Camp is one of the smaller ones out on the—on the floor of the Foaming Sea.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Here we show you over the Sea of Fertility now, and we ought to have Langrenus down south of track a few degrees, about 9 degrees south of track.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Now the crater that's in the center of the screen now is Webb. We'd be looking straight down on it at about 6 minutes before power descent. It has a relatively flat bottom to the crater, and you can see maybe two or three craters that are in the bottom of it on the western wall, the wall that's now nearest the—the camera. Near the bottom of the screen, we can see a dimple crater, just on the outside. And then coming back toward the bottom of the screen and to the left, you can see a series of depressions. It's this type of connected craters that give us most interest to discover why they're in the particular pattern that they're in. I'll zoom the camera in now and try and give you a closer look at it.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We're observing the dimple crater now. The central peak we can see on the Orbiter photos doesn't seem to stand out very well here.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Well, they're not central peaks. They're depressions in the center.

Michael Collins (CMP)

And you'll notice on the pitch thruster activity, I've still—I've put in a dozen minimum impulses in pitchdown, and I'm still far from correcting back to 315.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

We're moving the camera over to the right window now to give you Langrenus, its—its several central peaks and -

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We got Langrenus in our screen now.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Okay, 11. This is Houston. We're getting a beautiful picture of Langrenus now with its rather conspicuous central peak.

Michael Collins (CMP)

The Sea of Fertility doesn't look very fertile to me. I don't know who named it.

Neil Armstrong (CDR)

Well, it may have been named by a gentleman whom this crater was named after, Langrenus. Langrenus was a cartographer to the King of Spain and made one of the—one of the early reasonably accurate maps of the Moon.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. That's very interesting —

Neil Armstrong (CDR)

… at least it sounds better for our purposes than the Sea of Crises.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Okay. It looks like you're coming inside now on the camera.

Expand selection down Contract selection up

Spoken on July 19, 1969, 8:15 p.m. UTC (55 years, 5 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Well, I can't get behind to see the monitor. I'll bring the focus in, but we're going to be looking down past one of the LM quads and one of the antennas almost straight down at the ground track that we'll be seeing coming in now. I guess there's maybe 2 or 3 minutes before power descent.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

All right, that should put the LM structure about in focus, and I'm going to move it out to infinity and then expand the field of view.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Crater Secchi is out my window now, window number 2.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Hello, Apollo 11. This is Houston. We show you coming up on the terminator at 78 53, about 7 minutes from now, and we've also got the LOI 2 and TEI 5 PAD's ready for you after the TV whenever you want to terminate. Over.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

And we're getting a good view of the track leading into the landing site now and -

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Okay, And it looks like we got Secchi K, went by about 10 seconds ago; coming up on Apollo Ridge.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

And in the right hand portion of our screen right now, we can see Messier Alfa and Bravo with the light colored rays streaming off in one direction.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

I don't know if you can make out, but in the Sea of Fertility there are a number of craters that are just barely discernible, old, old craters whose outlines are just barely able to be seen.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. I think we can make them out. The color really enhances our ability to discern features and craters over what we see in real time on our black and white monitor.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Right. The—At these low Sun angles, there's no trace of brown, it's now returned to a very gray appearance and, like the 8 crew says, it has a look of plaster of paris to it at this Sun angle, which is completely lacking in …

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Okay. This is very close to ignition point for power descent. Just passing Mount Marilyn that—that triangular shaped mountain that you see in the center of the screen at the present time with crater Secchi Theta on top of the far northern edge of the mountain.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We're getting a good view of Mount Marilyn and the Secchi Theta.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

And now we're looking at what we call Boot Hill; occurs 20 seconds into the descent.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

The bright, sharp rimmed crater at the very right edge of the screen, Censorinus T. Now passing the—the 1 minute point in power descent.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. And for your information, your current altitude is 148 nautical miles above the surface.

Michael Collins (CMP)

I'm unable to determine altitude at all looking out the window. I couldn't tell whether we were down at 60 or up at 170.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

I bet you could tell if you were down at 50,000 feet.

Michael Collins (CMP)

I wouldn't be surprised.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

We're passing some steep ridges here. The edge of some old craters that were photographed by Apollo 10; and those—the crew of Apollo 10 was very impressed with the steepness of these ridges when they came over them at about 50,000 feet.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We can observe they're also steep even from this altitude. You got quite a shadow being cast by the Sun at these low angles.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

The entire surface is getting considerably darker than the surface that we looked at previously when the Sun was quite high above us. The crater in the—bright crater in the center of the screen,—well, the smaller one is Censorinus.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. And we show you low over 1 minute from the terminator at the present time.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

How's the brightness of the picture you're receiving? You think we ought to open f stop some as we approach the terminator?

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Yes. The brightness is still doing quite well. You can go ahead and open it up a stop or two. The automatic light level compensation seems to be working beautifully.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

There's a good picture of Boot Hill.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Three minutes and 15 seconds into the descent.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We're seeing Boot Hill now.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

The next crater coming into the bottom, that's Duke Island right there, and to the left, the crater—the largest of the craters near the center of the picture right now is Maskelyne W. This is a position check during descent at about 3 minutes and 39 seconds, and it's our down range position check and cross range position check prior to yawing over face up to acquire the landing radar. Past this point, we would be unable to see the surface below us until getting very near the landing area.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. I imagine you'll get a—you'll get a real good look at that tomorrow afternoon.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Sinuous Rille is the one that was referred to in Apollo 10 as Sidewinder.

Michael Collins (CMP)

That's a good name, too: Sidewinder and Diamondback. It looks like a couple of snakes down there in a lake bed.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

And we're approaching the terminator now. See the —

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Contrast has increased and only the sunlit side of these ridges remain illuminated, while the dark sides and the shadow will become completely black.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

11, this is Houston. The picture's getting a little grainy now. You might go ahead and open up the f stop.

Buzz Aldrin (LMP)

Landing point is just barely in the darkness. That one crater, the upper part of which you see, lower part completely in darkness. The small, well defined crater is Moltke, which is about abeam of the landing sight.

Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)

Roger. We can just see; it looks like a little less than half of its rim right now.