Many people are unaware of the vital role that Madrid played in the 1969 Moon landing. At that time, the Robledo Space Communications Complex in Madrid was in charge of supervising communications between Houston and Apollo XI, communications without which landing on the Moon might not have been possible.
This is how Carlos González Pintado, former Chief of Operations and Deputy Director of the Space Communications Complex, and a Spanish participant in the Apollo XI mission narrates it, a privileged person, since very few Spaniards were hired by the Complex: “only those of us who knew English” , he says , at a press conference organized by the INTA-CSIC Astrobiology Center, still associated with NASA today.
The Robledo Space Communications Complex is part of a worldwide network, still managed by NASA, and since the 1960s it had 6 antennas, equipped to monitor space missions, 4 of which are still operational today.
During the Apollo XI mission, the goal of technicians like Carlos was to oversee communications between the spacecraft and Houston , home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. With this task, Carlos even had access to the vital signs of the astronauts. In an interview with VERY INTERESTING, Carlos reveals some anecdotes that he lived at the precise moment when Armstrong descended the ladder to put his foot on the Moon. In addition, it reveals to us which were the most tense moments, in which the vital signs of the astronauts were triggered.
“When you heard them talking to Earth, there was no emotion whatsoever in their voice, whatever happened. But one thing is what the voice says, and another is what the biometric signals say , “he reveals, in a press conference prior to the interview.
The moment of the lunar landing was tense, since Armstrong’s task was to pilot the lunar module himself to deposit it in a quiet place on the Moon. The problem was that there was very little fuel left to carry out the moon landing, about 90 seconds, and 20 of them had to be reserved in case of having to abort.
“Once we managed to land on the Moon, we all breathed calmly, because it was a descent with problems.”
According to Carlos G. Pintado, Armstrong stumbled twice when exiting the lunar module , at which point his vital signs were triggered: “At that moment his heart rate rose above 150.”
In turn, it reveals other interesting anecdotes, such as that Armstrong and Aldrin’s spacesuits weighed 82 kilos on Earth, and that it took astronauts about 2 hours to put them on.
