[APOLLO 11] NEIL ARMSTRONG DESCENDS THE LUNAR LADDER. VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPH, 20 JULY 1969.

[APOLLO 11]

NEIL ARMSTRONG DESCENDS THE LUNAR LADDER JUST PRIOR TO BEING THE FIRST HUMAN BEING TO SET FOOT ON THE SURFACE OF THE MOON. 20 JULY 1969

Vintage silver gelatin print, 10 1/8 by 8 inches, "A Kodak Paper" watermark and NASA logo with caption, including NASA image ID "69-H-1031", printed on verso.

ONE OF THE MOST HISTORIC IMAGES OF ALL TIME, NEIL ARMSTRONG DESCENDING THE LADDER OF THE EAGLE TO TAKE THE FIRST EVER STEP ONTO THE MOON. This seemingly impossible image was taken by a special Lunar Surface Television built by Westinghouse for NASA. The camera was stored in the Lunar Module's (LM) Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA). Armstrong released the MESA when he first looked out the window of the LM, so that the camera could be in a position to capture his slow descent down the ladder and onto the lunar surface. Armstrong and would later remove the camera from the LM and mount it onto a tripod to capture a wider view of the LM, ALdrin's descent onto the lunar surface, and the activities conducted by the pair on that historic day. Because the present image is a still captured from motion picture imagery, it presents some of the striations resulting from the complicated method of date transmission from the moon down to the earth.