The 'First Steps' Triptych: A group of three photographs showing Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon

Three vintage gelatin silver prints, 89 x 127mm (3.5 x 5in), each watermarked ‘A KODAK PAPER’ to verso. Fine condition.

At 02:56 UTC, on July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder descending from the Lunar Module Eagle, and uttered some of the most famous words in history: 'it's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind'. The moment was captured as a live feed from a Westinghouse camera attached to the Eagle, yet this provided no permanent record, so NASA, as with other televised events, had photographs taken of the moment as it played out on television. This trio of photographs is the result.

The first photograph shows Armstrong on the ladder, where he paused and commented on the fine sand-like surface of the Moon:

I'm at the foot of the ladder. The LM [Lunar Module] foot pads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It?s almost like a powder. [.] I'm going to step off the LM now.

The second photograph shows the first steps - the moment Armstrong uttered his famous line.

The third follows Armstrong as he bounds on, commenting:

The surface is fine and powdery. I can […] pick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots.

Although Armstrong took an extensive series of very famous photographs on the surface of the Moon, there are only a couple of photographs in which he is (marginally) visible himself, and aside from the present group there is no photographic record of the first steps.

These photographs were produced immediately after the landing: not only do they bear the typical 'A KODAK PAPER' watermark, but they are in fact dated in the print 'JUL ? 69 ?', the month of the lunar landing - possibly before Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins made splashdown near the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, on July 24.

NASA later released a large-format photograph from the video showing Armstrong on the ladder prior to the first step (NASA S-69-42583), but we have been unable to locate any other photographic images of the first moments after Armstrong actually descended to the lunar surface.