21 July 1969: After spending a total of 21 hours, 36 minutes, 21 seconds on the surface of The Moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin fired the rocket engine of the Lunar Module’s Ascent Stage. The liftoff was at 17:54 UTC.
Three hours and forty minutes later, the Eagle ascent stage docked with Columbia, the Command/Service Module, in lunar orbit.
21 July 1969: Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr. on the surface of The Moon in a photograph taken by Neil Alden Armstrong.
The reflection of the Lunar Module Eagle and of Armstrong can be seen in Aldrin’s face plate.
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. . . .”
20 July 1969, 18:12:01 UTC, T + 100 hours, 40 minutes, 1.9 seconds: The Lunar Module Eagle completes the separation maneuver, moving away from the Apollo 11 Command and Service Module Columbia.
19 July 1969, 22:42 UTC, T + 81 hours, 10 minutes: Just over 58 minutes since the Apollo 11 spacecraft entered a circular orbit around the Moon, Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin entered the Lunar Module Eagle to power it up and start systems checks in preparation for the descent to the Lunar surface.