First on the right, engineer Carlos González Pintado in Fresnedillas tracking station, in 1969. history THE GIANT LEAP for mankind INTA’s tracking station in Fresnedillas (Madrid) was the first to know, fifty years ago, that Apollo 11 had landed on the Moon HOUSTON, Tranquillity base here, the Eagle has landed». Neil Arms- trong confirmed with these words, that man had landed on the Moon aboard Apollo 11. It was 9:18 PM of July 20th, 1969, 50 years ago now, and the first to hear them were the technicians working on the station established by NASA and INTA for manned flights in the Madrid town of Fresnedillas de la Oliva, dependent on Robledo de Chavela. The images of Armstrong descending the lunar module and his famous sentence «this is one small step for man but a giant leap for mankind» would be received six hours later. The message had taken 1.3 seconds to reach Fresnedillas, which is 0.3 seconds before Houston (Texas-USA) where the control centre was located. A 21 year old Spanish engineer, Carlos Gonzalez Pintado, was in charge of the receiving and transmitting equipment. He had started to work on the station a year earlier, as a result of the launching of the first manned flight. Those were times of great expectation «but we never feared it could go wrong». They had full confidence in his preparation. «Between Apollo and Apollo, we modified the equipment to be more efficient and we ran many simulations to maintain a high operational level. This was absolutely essential because we were dealing with people’s lives». Due to the heavy workload, the team in Fresnedillas was not able to thoroughly enjoy the event. «The responsibility for maintaining the receiver in good working order, with a good frequency and with the least possible noise, as well as making sure that our transmitter 32 Revista Española de Defensa July/August 2019
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