Fifty-six years later, it still remains the most followed and most romantic space mission yet.
In April 1968, the now-legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey had shown movie audiences around the world a moon landing. Americans would go on to see their astronauts turn reel into real soon. On July 20, 1969 (July 21 in India), two of their men from the Apollo 11 mission didn't just land on the moon, they walked on it too.
Neil Armstrong's famous line while stepping out for his famous moonwalk—'That's one small step for (a) man, a giant leap for mankind'—came at 10:56:20 PM Eastern Time, July 20 (8:26 AM, July 21 for Indians).
The landing of the lunar module had come around six-and-a-half hours earlier at 4:17 pm Eastern Time on the same Sunday (1:47 AM IST, July 21).
Before these goosebump-generating events came heart-pounding moments for those tracking the climax of a dream President John F Kennedy had set in motion in 1961—"of landing a man safely on moon and returning him safely to Earth" before the end of the decade.
Armstrong's heart told its own tale. As the New York Times' John Noble Wilford noted famously in a front-page story, "At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute—77 is normal for him—and it shot up to 156 at touchdown."
Armstrong couldn't help it. With Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin for company, he was forced to take over the controls and steer the module away from where the computer was pointing to since "the auto-targeting was taking us right into a football field-sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks". Finally, the module named 'The Eagle' touched down about 250 kilometres west-southwest of the crater Maskelyne in the Sea of Tranquility.
Armstrong's family watched his walk huddled around a 26-inch television, which his son Rick Armstrong later remembered to be "as big a TV as you could get back then". Such were the times.
They saw Armstrong say early into his two-hour-and-31-minute moonwalk that "the surface is fine and powdery. I can pick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch. But I can see the footprints of my boots in the treads in the fine sandy particles."
President Nixon called the first man to have set foot on moon around 30 minutes after his feat and told him that "because of what you have done the heavens have become a part of man's world, and as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth."
The Indian who saw it all and captured it with his commentary
Watching all this unfold from a studio in Washington and transmitting it to a Tamil audience was a 33-year-old, who originally hailed from Chettiyapatti village in Tamil Nadu's Trichy district. His journey, too, was memorable.
V Nallathambi had made his maiden voyage to the United States after having been selected by the Voice of America from among other All India Radio presenters for a stint with them.
The now 89-year-old Nallathambi's had been a hard-fought climb. He lost his father when he was just one and grew up with his mother and uncle's support in a village with a school where there were classes only till the fifth standard. A teacher's encouragement helped him find a way to continue his education and after managing to become a teacher himself, he landed a presenter's job first in Tirunelveli, before moving to All India Radio (AIR) Trichy and then AIR Chennai.
At AIR Chennai, his live coverage of the late CM Annadurai's funeral from the American Consulate along a two-kilometre stretch went on to play a huge part in earning him a stint in the Voice of America in the capital of the United States from 1969 to 1970.
Once there, Nallathambi, who still calls himself a 'rural person', bought his first TV set a few weeks before Apollo 11 took off on July 16.
"I was trained by the Voice of America team to operate the TV. I learnt how to switch it on and switch it off. It was needed since there were no TVs back in Chennai in those days," he remembers.
On July 20 in Washington, Nallathambi found himself in a cabin with a TV set and began to commentate. Thankfully, he was given Armstrong's now-iconic line in advance with the caveat that there might be minor changes to it. He had found time to prepare the translated "Oru mannithanikku ethu siriya thappadi aanal manithakulathuku ithu oru maaparum neerpazhchal".
But despite having this in hand, he still had the "shivers" when he began his transmission, he recounts.
A bigger challenge sprang up when President Nixon came on air and the TV switched to a split screen mode, a novelty Nallathambi had not been prepared for. His presence of mind helped him handle that by stating matter-of-factly: "Now we have President Nixon talking to Neil Armstrong".
Nallathambi rates the coverage as life-changing.
"It gave me great satisfaction and the belief that I had arrived as a broadcaster and was no more the elementary school teacher I once was. It helped me gain an identity and changed my position in life and fortunes. So many people have since come up to me and said 'I have heard your voice and recalled particular sequences. While they could not recall my name, all of them could identify my voice!'."
A 600-million-plus audience
Voice of America's coverage in multiple languages reached over 600 million people worldwide, many of them in India, as recorded in a book by Alan Heil. The broadcast won a Peabody award (the radio equivalent of the Pulitzer) and many are the schoolboys around the world who remember having been told to tune into it.
Among the many experts featured were Dr Wernher Von Braun, the man behind Saturn V, the rocket that propelled the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. "Our flight has 300,000 fathers..." he told the radio station, acknowledging the number of nameless, faceless people who played their part in ensuring success.
An even more interesting reaction came from Isaac Asimov, one of the doyens of science-fiction writing. "I look forward to a time when humans will colonize the moon ..." he responded.
That observation came at a time when Moon mania was at its peak. In three fervid years between 1969 to 1972, 24 astronauts were sent to the moon.
After Apollo, there have been unmanned missions including our very own Chandrayaan 3, which gave India the honour of being the first country to achieve a successful landing on the south pole of the moon. But a colony on the moon, spare that thought.
Nallathambi, who now serves as the President of the Indian Broadcasters' Forum, lives in a residential colony in Chennai's Thiruvanmiyur—and is the happier for it. The good Doctor (a PhD holder) retains the honour of being the teacher who covered the moon landing of another teacher in Armstrong.