They Were at Mission Control During Apollo 11. 50 Years Later, the Memory Still Moves Them to Tears

The words spoken by astronaut Neil Armstrong when he became the first man to step foot on the moon — at 10:56 pm Eastern Time on July 20, 1969 — have since become one of the most famous sentences ever uttered.

But NASA’s Mission Control staffers in Houston were moved by a different line, spoken about six hours earlier.

Shortly after 4:05 p.m., the words came across from Armstrong’s fellow astronaut Buzz