2019 $1 Moon Landing 50th Anniversary One Small Step PNCIn the early afternoon of 21 July 1969 at 12: 56 Australian EST (20 July 1969 at 02: 56 UTC), NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11 mission, stepped onto the lunar surface six and a half hours after landing the lunar module Eagle on the Moon. Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin joined him some 20 minutes later. Two stations in Australia were directly involved in bringing television from the Moon landing to the world: NASA's Honeysuckle Creek