Apollo 11 Apollo 11. The initial crew assignment of Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot (CMP) Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Buzz Aldrin on the backup crew for Apollo 9 was officially announced on November 20, 1967. Lovell and Aldrin had previously flown together as the crew of Gemini 12. Due to design and manufacturing delays in the LM, Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 swapped prime and backup crews, and Armstrong's crew became the backup for Apollo 8. Based on the normal crew rotation scheme, Armstrong was then expected to command Apollo 11. There would be one change. Michael Collins,
Apollo 11 missing tapes the tapes' disappearance. They also partially released newly enhanced footage obtained during the search. Lowry Digital completed the full moonwalk restoration project in late 2009. Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface on July 21, 1969, at 02:56 UTC; Buzz Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. Only limited radio bandwidth was available to transmit the video signal from the lunar landings, which needed to be multiplexed with other communication and telemetry channels beamed from the Lunar Module, back to Earth.