One small week for mankind: Powercoin incorporates a piece of Apollo 11 in its smartminted coin

Our look at 50th anniversary of the moon landing coins continues with Powercoins CIT-produced effort.  Struck in three-ounces of fine 0.999, the coin employs colour and a black proof finish to stand out from the crowd, but adds in a little something to make it quite special.

The design isn’t a strict copy of the famous Neil Armstrong taken image of Buzz Aldrin on the surface, but it does use many of the most familiar elements. The lunar lander is there, the Stars and Stripes flag of the USA, and the blue and green visage of the Planet Earth hanging in the distance. Even a smattering of footprints have been incorporated iinto the lunar surface. What makes this coin stand out from the pack is an insert in the reverse face. Inside a small window sits a piece of Kapton.

Kapton is a polyimide film developed in the late 1960s by DuPont and has numerous uses because of its thermal stability from -269 to +400ºC. It was employed on the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module, and the bottom of the ascent stage surrounding the ascent engine, in both cases as a thermal insulator. Today, it continues to be used in satellites, electronics, 3d-printing and the aeronautic industry.

It’s pretty cool to see a piece of this incredible material and it follows previous similar coins from CIT like the Samurai one which contained a genuine piece of Samurai armour, and the beautiful Zeppelin issue that incorporated an actual piece of the famous airship LZ127 that was scrapped by the Nazis in 1940. The Moon landing coin is much rarer and just 205 pieces will be struck. The coin will come in a ‘floating frame’ for easy display, and with a certificate of authenticity. It sells for around €360 and will ship from the end of this month.

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THE LANDING

One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. With these words, astronaut Neil Armstrong opened up the next phase in human exploration by stepping from the Apollo 11 lunar lander onto the surface of the Moon. Joined 20 minutes later by Buzz Aldrin, and watched overhead by designated driver, Michael Collins, this was an event that was watched around the world with absolute admiration.

It was July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC that the lunar module Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility, and six hours later Armstrong set foot on the surface. Along with Aldrin, they spent around 135 minutes walking on the lunar surface and collected a little more than 21 kg of material to return to Earth. Including their time in the module, they spent 21½ hours on the Moon.

The mission to the Moon was called Apollo 11, and started with the launch of a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on 16 July at 13:32 UTC and was the fifth manned mission of NASA’s Apollo program. The Apollo spacecraft was constructed around three basic parts. A command module was the living and control space for the three astronauts, and was the only part that splashed back down to Earth in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 after more than eight days in space. The service module supplied the command module with power and propulsion, and the lunar module landed on the Moon surface (The Eagle has landed) and returned the two walkers back to the command module.

One of the first major events that was broadcast live around the world, the landing affirmed the United States as the victor in the Space Race against the Soviet Union, after being beaten by the Communist superpower in the race to get a man into orbit some years previously. There were just five further manned landings on the Moon, the last in 1972, and amazingly, there weren’t even any unmanned landings between 1976 and the end of 2013. Conspiracy theories abound about the truth of the landings, of course, most complete nonsense, but it happened and this fantastic achievment will be heavily commemorated this year.

SPECIFICATION
DENOMINATION $20 CID (Cook Islands)
COMPOSITION 0.999 silver
WEIGHT 93.3 grams
DIMENSIONS 55.0 mm
FINISH Proof
MODIFICATIONS Colour, black proof, insert
MINTAGE 205
BOX / COA Yes / Yes