229. [Apollo 11] THE HISTORIC FIRST LAUNCH OF HUMANITY TO THE SURFACE OF ANOTHER WORLD NASA, 16 July 1969 Printed 1969. Vintage chromogenic print on fibre-based Kodak paper [NASA image S-69-39526]. With NASA caption and "A Kodak Paper" watermark on the reverse, numbered "NASA S-69-39526" in red in the top margin (issued by NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston, Texas). 20.3 x 25.4 cm. (8 x 10 in.) Historical context A striking wide-angle photograph of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket lifting off from Cape Kennedy toward the Moon, marking an unprecedented leap in human exploration. This image stands as a testament to the triumph of human ingenuity and the shared dream of exploring beyond our world. *"It was so much different from any other flight – it was something that had to grip you. You knew darned good and well that this was real history in the making. The thing that made this one [flight] particularly gripping was that sense of history, that if this was successful this was a date that was going to be in all the history books for time evermore – everything else that happened in our time is going to be an asterisk. I think we sensed that at the time – that this was it."* —Walter Cronkite, legendary American television commentator (Hamish Lindsey, Tracking Apollo to the Moon, Springer, London, 2001, p. 214) The Apollo/Saturn V space vehicle, carrying astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lifted off at 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969, embarking on humanity's first manned lunar landing mission. This engineering marvel, standing 363 feet tall, generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust during liftoff from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A, leaving an immense plume of smoke and fire in its wake.