Fact #068
Missions
Apollo 11 landed with less than a minute of fuel left by the flight rules, while Armstrong flew past a boulder field looking for somewhere flat.
The guidance computer was steering them into a crater strewn with rocks, so Armstrong took semi-manual control and flew on, burning margin the whole way. Mission control called out the remaining seconds. It's the moment the whole programme came down to a pilot looking out of a window.
Source: Apollo 11 mission transcript, NASA (opens in a new tab) · checked Aug 2026