[youtube https://youtu.be/ieGKIh3koAI]
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men on the moon when they landed in the Sea of Tranquility. During their initial 21-hour foray onto the lunar surface, they received a telephone call from President Nixon. This is historic footage of that interaction. Nixon himself considered it the most important call he had made during his time in office, even more specifically, “the most historic phone call ever made from the White House.”
So how was the call made? How do you call the moon? Simply, the call went from the Oval Office in Washington D.C. to Houston, where it was routed into space via Mission Control, through the capsule communicator, or CapCom, astronaut Bruce McCandless II.
When the Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth, they were greeted by Nixon himself on the U.S.S. Hornet, the vessel which picked up the recovery spacecraft.