9781422287439

11

“The Eagle has Landed”

sketch of an eagle landing on a cratered lunar surface, and the emblem for Apollo 11 was born. “The choice of an eagle as a motif for the landing led swiftly to naming the landing craft itself Eagle ,” Collins said. * * * At just over a mile above the lunar surface, with Armstrong at the controls of Eagle , problems arose. It was hard to find a place to land on the rocky lunar sur- face, and the Eagle was running low on fuel. Suddenly, Armstrong found a break in a boulder field. The Eagle flew over a smooth and flat area on the eastern edge of the area called the Sea of Tranquility. As he eased the Eagle gently toward the lunar surface, the spacecraft was engulfed in a cloud of dust kicked up by the exhaust from its engine. A light flashed on the Eagle ’s control panel, telling the astronauts that a probe on the bottom of the Lunar Module had touched the lunar surface. “We copy you down, Eagle ,” said Mission Control in Houston. A few seconds passed. And then, a voice from the Moon. “Houston, Tranquility Base here,” Armstrong said. “The Eagle has landed.”

Text-Dependent Question What was the goal of the Apollo 11 mission?

Research Project During the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union were each striving to become the first nation to land on the moon. In this Cold War context, what are some reasons that “Eagle” would be an appropriate name for the American craft that accomplished this feat first?