Images: The Apollo 11 moon landing

Lift-off took place at 9:32am EDT on 16 July, 1969. Saturn V took off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, at the Kennedy Space Center, with the astronauts ensconced near the very top of the 363-foot-tall rocket.

A camera mounted on top of the mobile launch tower captured this vivid image of the lift-off. Collins said in a Nasa account from the 1970s that the rocket was "climbing like a dingbat". Less than three hours after liftoff, the astronauts were at 1,200 miles altitude, and at one point in the early stages they were travelling at 35,579 feet per second, Collins said: "More than enough to escape from the Earth's gravitational field."