On the 20th of July, it was the 50th anniversary of Moon landing.
I read a few days ago that Moon landing was the biggest scientific and technological achievement, that after finishing the Apollo program, nobody was able to do. Not because its technical difficulties though, but its enormous expenditure.
The lesser-known part of this historical achievement is that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent 22.5 hours on the surface of the Moon, pinned out the American flag and they had no idea where they were. Not only them, but neither the Nasa's base on Earth knew.
The Apollo 11's landing point was determined in a place, called the sea of tranquility by the Nasa. Through the telescopes it seemed safe and flat where the landing would be relatively easy. They put out a 40 by 8 km long zone to land.
The astronauts were thoroughly clued up about where they go. They had detailed maps and from previously taken photos they memorized the terrain of the place and those orientation points which helped them in the navigation.
Everything went well until the astronauts during the preparation for landing glimpsed with their own eyes that where they are going to land. That was a football pitch sized crater with car sized stones.
The captain Neil Armstrong judged that place too risky so he took the navigation from the robot pilot. Eventually they landed a few km away from the planned landing point.
The improvised landing went well. After getting out to the surface and after saying "that's one small step for man one giant leap for mankind" they realized that they had no idea where they were.
The terrain wasn't similar to their maps and they couldn't recognize anything from the photos. During that 22.5 hours the Nasa couldn't locate the position of the astronauts. Nobody knew their exact coordinates even when they left the Moon to return home.
Later the Nasa menaged to locate the place where they landed and took photos with satellites. It turned out that they put the flag out near the spaceship and during taking off it blew away.
Image source:
https://www.space.com/26573-apollo-11-moon-landing-45th-anniversary.html
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