“We saw them come out of the helicopters, it was amazing to see the three of them,” Powers recalled.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,

“It was very dicey, those waves were five or six feet tall,” said Powers. A brilliant full Moon rises over the Launch Complex 39 area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “There I was, a 23-year-old kid, with President Nixon, watching.”. The three crewmen will remain in the MQF until they arrive at the Manned Spacecraft Center's (MSC) Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL).

On July 24, 1969, Dick Powers was a 23-year-old Navy lieutenant on the Apollo 11 Recovery ship USS Hornet. The area shown here is about 1.8 miles (3 kilomet... Astrochemist Jamie Elsila, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, unwraps pristine Moon soil collected in 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts. “8 pm the night before, all our communications went down – think about that, we’re in the middle of the Pacific,” Powers explained. The ship could reach speeds of 33 knots, or 38 miles per hour. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Apollo 11 splashed down at 11:49 a.m. (CDT), July 24, 1969, about 812 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii and only 12 nautical miles from the USS Hornet. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers, America celebrates the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. The Apollo capsule currently kept on the Hornet, pictured here, is nearly identical to the one that returned Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins safely to Earth. “Our ship, the USS Hornet, had just got back from Vietnam - we had been back for about a month and we got picked to do Apollo 11,” he told Fox News. ALAMEDA — The USS Hornet was on hand 40 years ago to pick up the Apollo 11 astronauts after their Columbia Command Module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969. “It was a fireball – we could see it tracing right across the horizon, it was amazing.”, Dick Powers, who at the time was a 23-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant, pictured wearing a baseball cap that was to be presented to the Apollo 11 astronauts. “He was jubilant,” he said. Graphics: Apollo 11 splashed down at 11:49 a.m. (CDT), July 24, 1969, about 812 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii and only 12 nautical miles from the USS Hornet. The unit was then lifted by a crane into a plane and flown to Houston where it was hooked up to a larger living space at Johnson Space Center.

Your California Privacy Rights. All market data delayed 20 minutes. Already confined to the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) are (left to right) Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, command module pilot; and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot. While astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" to explore the Sea of Tranquility region of the moon, astronaut Collins remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "Columbia" in lunar orbit. Today, the aircraft carrier is preserved as a museum in Alameda, California.

©2020 FOX News Network, LLC. Below: The engine revolutions indicator allowed for precise maneuvers by regulating how fast each engine was turning. “There was a lot going on, we’re getting in position, we were waiting for the capsule to come down,” he said.