One of the most crucial pieces from mankind’s first journey to the moon is soon going to go under the hammer as a part of Christie’s New York auction that celebrates 50 years of Apollo 11’s successful moon mission. It’s the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Timeline Book that sat right in between Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot ‘Buzz’ Aldrin as they made the history-creating lunar landing on 20 July 1969. The book is basically a manual for the astronauts to perform a successful landing on the moon and a safe return to the earth. It narrates in details the entire voyage of the Apollo 11 Eagle from the spacecraft’s inspection to the lunar descent to the rendezvous with astronaut Michael Collins aboard the Command Module. “No more significant document of space exploration history is ever likely to be created, because future manned missions will be more fully digitized and not leave a comparable human trace,” according to Christie’s.
The Apollo 11 Timeline Book will cross the auction block on July 18 at Christie’s in New York. The book still retains traces of lunar dust and annotations and markings from Aldrin and Armstrong. The pre-sale estimate for the lunar landing manual is believed to be between sale $7 million to $9 million. The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Timeline Book will also be on display at Christie’s in New York (4-15 May), Christie’s in Hong Kong (24-27 May), and Christie’s in Beijing (13-16 June), with later dates in San Francisco and Seattle to be announced.
