Neil Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, lunar module pilot, became the first human beings to walk on the moon. A Saturn V rocket launched the Command Module, Service Module ("Columbia") and Lunar Module ("Eagle") from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 in Merritt Island, Florida.
The moon landing was almost canceled in the final seconds because of an overload of the Apollo Guidance Computer’s memory, but on advice from Earth, Armstrong and Aldren ignored the warnings and landed safely. The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first recognizably modern embedded system used in real-time by astronaut pilots.
