Three hundred people applied for the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. Only three were picked. Mike Collins, an Air Force pilot, passed the tough physical, mental, and mechanical tests. He was named the pilot of the spaceship.
It took a lot of hard work to get ready. Collins practiced flight operations in a simulator (a model of the actual rocket). He had to know every detail and understand everything about how the spaceship worked. Lives would be in his hands! As pilot, Collins was at the controls of the spaceship. He circled the Moon alone while his fellow astronauts, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr., became the first humans to walk on its surface. The three men set “a record that no one could better.” They were the first!
