Apollo 11 Landing Animation [4K]

On July 20th, 1969, astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin became the first humans to land on another celestial body, specifically the Moon's Sea of Tranquility. Despite being off-course by miles from their original landing site and the tanks having less than a minute's worth of fuel left, Armstrong managed to find an area flat and clear enough to attempt landing. This animation shows what an observer sitting at the landing site would've seen during the final minutes of the first Lunar Landing.

Special Thanks to my Patrons:
John Barlow
Marcus House
NSS North Houston Space Society

[BradleyG]

"Houston, tranquility base here... The eagle has landed"
Gives me chills every time. What an amazing era and generation of humans :)

[donjones]

My uncle would have LOVED to see the LM landing like this - he worked on the lunar modules as an engineer at Grumman. I only had about a 10% impression of the progression of the landing, you've filled in the other 90%.

[MrHichammohsen]

I swear i knew you were gonna drop something for the apollo 11 landing anniversary!

[justinkommers]

Great animation, you have gotten me interested into learning 3D animation so I can make animations like this.

[CausticLemons]

And that's a beautiful 3d replication of the Eagle! Really, really lovely on the eyes.

[korrdavl]

Beautiful high velocity dust plumes radiating out.

Beautiful glowing engine cowl.

So great and the attention to detail is excellent, excellent

[g.gordonwoody]

God bless you! I recorded this from TV on 3” reel-to-reel in 1969 when I was 11. This view finally makes sense of all those call outs. Gives me goose bumps!

[desmond-hawkins]

The Eagle is very nicely done! The trajectory though feels a bit strange when you see the LM standing still and Buzz Aldrin doing "3.5 down, 9 forward". He's describing their movements towards the surface, in feet/sec. Here the animation really doesn't match, so I'd suggest trying to at least partially make it correspond to his voice because this is like watching a sports game with commentary saying one team scored and nothing's happening on screen. He reports mostly velocity and altitude but also the Landing Point Designator Angle (LPD angle), so it's like "700 feet (altitude), 21 (ft/sec) down, 33 degrees (LPD)". 33 degrees is a lot(!). One thing that's scary about their descent is really the forward velocity, they were trying to find a spot to land and it took a while and had them going horizontally for quite a while. Also at the end when he says "Contact light", this is a reading from a thin wire that was under the LM that extended _below_ its landing legs and was there to detect the surface right before they reached it. So it's not actually the lander's legs that first touched the moon but this contact sensor, and when he reports "Contact light" it's because this sensor is now touching the moon (some argue this is the moment they "landed" since from that point on some part of the LM was touching the moon). This would be an amazing details to include in an animation.

[kylehuntmaui]

I was just thinking that if the recording was captured on earth, then they actually landed 1.25 seconds sooner than they said, since it takes that much time for their message to reach earth.

[onyourmarkphoto]

This is so cool to see from this angle. It really helps you understand the hovering Armstrong did towards the end. Fascinating. It would be cool to see an animation using the scenario where Apollo 11 had to abort or if it had snagged on a boulder or tipped over after snagging a strut. Or how about a nogo to stay after a minute. These animations make you appreciate the true life and death risk the astrobnauts faced.

[seand]

I like how you animated the dust disappearing right after shut down. Neil said that element of the landing was something they didn't train for in the simulator and sort of surprised him. Not that he didn't understand it, just that he wasn't expecting it. No atmosphere, so the dust immediately settles. Well done.

[Reggie]

Brilliant video! I was glued....totally got goose pimples and a tear in my eye. Well done!

[timnook]

Your Animations are a gift we didn't deserve

[RocketGyan]

This is totally insane animation.🤯🤯 Keep up the great work man🚀

[ApogeeUK]

Beautiful animation. Outstanding piloting!

[dvanerdivkanade]

Loving the "contact light okay engine stop!" this time around 🙃👌

[RwingDsquad]

I really love these videos you've been doing

[wxb]

Great animation. I would've moved that camera so the sun wasnt obscuring the view.

[johnharris]

Amazing! I am in awe of your skill...You did forgot the contact sensors on the legs... little foldable sticks that hung down about 30"? When touched the ground they would fold and thus "contact light"

[mgutkowski]

I genuinely don't want to nit-pick a fabulous piece of work, but you've missed the foot-pad probes. They stuck out several feet under the bottom of two (?) of the foot-pads and were the sensors that lit the "contact light" telling the astronauts to switch off the engine and let the craft drop to the surface (1/6th G remember). This is recreated in From The Earth to the Moon, and you can see them in the famous footage of eagle from Columbia before the descent.