Science

Moon landing shock: Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 secret revealed by NASA colleague


More than 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, NASA completed the seemingly impossible Apollo 11 mission to put the first two men on the Moon – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong made history, jumping off the lunar lander Eagle and delivering his legendary “one small step” speech to the millions of anxious people watching back on Earth. The late astronaut became an overnight sensation after burying the US flag into the lunar surface and bringing an end to the Space Race with the Soviet Union.

However, fellow NASA employee Mike Massimino knows a secret about that legendary mission that few others do and Neil deGrasse Tyson pressed him on it during a recent StarTalk podcast.

Mr Tyson said: “I happen to own an Omega watch.

“I got the Stephen Hawking Award for Science Communication, so it’s only like a year old.

“But this introduced me to Omega watches and that Omega was the first watch on the Moon.

“They were chosen by NASA after NASA got all the premier watches, they got Rolex, Breitling, all the top watches of the day and they put them all in black boxes each and scrambled them.”

Mr Tyson went on to explain how Omega was chosen to be the first watch on the Moon.

He added: “Then they shaked (sic) them, baked them, heated them, radiated them and the end of the experiments, the Omega still had the correct time.

“So Omega is our watch and they still milk that today with their advertising.”

“But in any event, like the festival that I attended, the STARMUS Festival that Hawking had organised, Omega was one of the sponsors.

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“So this became the watch and it’s engraved on the back.

“But I saw a watch that looked very much like this on Neil Armstrong’s arm.”

Mr Massimino then revealed he was wearing the exact same watch as the one Armstrong did half a century prior.

He stated: “I’m wearing it. We had Omega watches on the shuttle and it was explained to us how they won the competition.

“It was the crystal, apparently that was almost impenetrable and you could do whatever you wanted to it and it wasn’t going to crack.

He revealed during the same episode how he took inspiration from Armstrong.

He continued: “So, for my tweet I did the same approach, I said ‘I’m not going to worry about this first tweet, we have to launch into space, we have to get there alive and successfully’.

“This was a mistake. So I get there and it’s alright, we’re alive, the computers are up and running on day one, so I need to come up with something.

“So what I tweeted was: ‘Launch was awesome, the adventure of a lifetime has begun, I’m feeling great and enjoying the view.’”



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