By Daniel Masoliver
The Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility at 20.17 (GMT), 20 July 1969. Just a few hours later, Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the lunar module and became the first human being to set foot on the surface of the moon. Thanks to a camera on the side of the module, he was watched live by an estimated global television audience of 600 million people.
That we were able to fly men to the moon – and bring them home again safely – was in itself a remarkable achievement. But that a sixth of the world’s population at the time was able to tune in, and hear Armstrong’s famous words upon taking his first steps on the lunar surface, was truly a giant leap for broadcasting.
The fact that the technology existed to beam these events across the world was a key reason for their taking place at all – in the height of the Cold War, President John F Kennedy needed something that would capture the public imagination. And today, thanks to the advent of sites like Twitter and YouTube, people are able to feel more connected than ever before to the working life of astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The Apollo 11 moon landing was a significant moment not just in science, but also in television history; some 125 million people across America alone witnessed the moonwalk. Around 94 per cent of television households in the States watched an average of 15 and-a-half hours of coverage over the two week period surrounding the mission.
In Britain, people were hooked on coverage of the expedition, and this was reflected in the TV schedules. All three existing channels, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, were packed with Apollo-related programming.
We take 24-hour rolling news for granted now, but the moonwalk, which took place at 3.56 am UK time, paved the way for this development. For the first time in British television history, there were all-night broadcasts, with both BBC1 and ITV staying on air throughout the night to cover the moonwalk.
In a diary entry for July 21st 1969, comedian Michael Palin summed up what has now become familiar for anyone who has watched rolling news: “The extraordinary thing about the evening was that, until 3.56 am, when Armstrong clambered out of the spaceship, and activated the keyhole camera, we had seen no space pictures at all, and yet ITV had some how contrived to fill ten hours with a programme devoted to the landing.”
TV has moved on in the 32 years since the Apollo 11 mission. Science fiction too has continued to become fact, with a permanently inhabited space station now in orbit around the Earth. And recognising the public’s continued fascination with all things astronautical, NASA and other space agencies now supply the world – and its media – with greater access than ever before.
Last year Soichi Noguchi, a Japanese aeronautical engineer living aboard the ISS, became a Twitter sensation when he became the first person to tweet photographs of the Earth from space. Noguchi’s incredible pictures were picked up by newspapers and magazines around the world [The Times, Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph].
One of Astro Soichi’s photos:
You can view the rest of his photos here
NASA now even has its own TV channel where it broadcasts live footage of missions and events, as well as its YouTube channel which it uses for video blogs from crew members aboard the ISS. These videos provide an amazing insight into the daily lives of the astronauts aboard the space station, as well as stunning photography of the Earth. You can even watch potty training, NASA-style.
In total, videos on NASA’s main YouTube channel have had almost 19 million views. This is a huge number of hits, but it doesn’t even come close to the 288 million of viral videos such as “Charlie bit my finger”. Soichi Noguchi amassed over 330,000 followers on Twitter – 30,000 more than JLS and almost twice as many as Jedward – but sadly that’s still 1.5 million short of Charlie Sheen.
It is hard today to imagine an outer-space event that could trump the 1969 moon landing’s mass media coverage and record-breaking audience figures. But there is a vast amount of coverage of extra-terrestrial exploration out there, and almost all of it online. Since the Apollo 11 mission in the summer of 1969, innovations in communications have been keeping pace with those in space travel – the final frontier has never been closer to home.