This happened 48 years ago. The little lunar lander touched down on the moon's surface at 2:18 MDT July 20, 1969, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men on the moon. "The Eagle has landed."

Armstrong and Aldrin, with Mike Collins, had left Earth 4 days earlier, on top of a huge Saturn 5 rocket from Kennedy Space Center. The flight was the culmination of NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs.

The two astronauts settled in while Collins orbited the moon in the other half of the spaceship. At 8:56 p.m. MDT, Armstrong took that "One small step for a man," and set foot on the dusty, rocky surface of the Moon.

He was the first of only 12 men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972.

After 22 hours on the moon they fired their ascent engine and the lander connected with the orbiter to bring them back to Earth with splashdown July 24.

Here's some footage from the transmissions of that landing.

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