Google doodle celebrates 50 years of NASA's Moon landing

Pic/Screengrab

Google on Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the historic first Moon-landing by NASA's Apollo 11 mission with an interactive video doodle.

The Doodle celebrates the epic moment in the history of mankind by taking viewers through the journey to the Moon and back, narrated by Apollo 11 mission astronaut Michael Collins, who is famous for orbiting the Moon in solitude.

While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin manoeuvred the lunar module to the surface, Collins remained in orbit, manning the command module. He did not witness the landing; his spacecraft sped on after he dropped off the two other astronauts.

Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle. Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16, and was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo programme.

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Explaining the journey to the Moon and back in the video, Collins says that NASA worked with three antennas around the Earth for the mission -- one in Spain, Australia and California each.

He says at the time, the astronauts thought their computers were "very sophisticated but in fact, they had less computing powers than what we carry in our pockets today."

Collins, 88, describes the first sight of the Moon up close as "a magnificent spectacle." "The Sun was coming around it, cascading and making a golden halo. But it was nothing compared to the sight of the tiny Earth. The Earth was the main show," Collins says.

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