When Apollo 11 came home, NASA sealed the astronauts, their spacecraft and their Moon rocks behind a biological barrier for 21 days in case lunar microbes existed — and Neil Armstrong celebrated his 39th birthday in quarantine behind glass

When Apollo 11 came home, NASA sealed the astronauts, their spacecraft and their Moon rocks behind a biological barrier for 21 days in case lunar microbes existed — and Neil Armstrong celebrated his 39th birthday in quarantine behind glass

When Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific on 24 July 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were home, but they were not yet allowed to go home. NASA had no evidence that the Moon carried life. It also had no evidence strong enough to dismiss the possibility completely. The agency therefore placed the astronauts, the command module Columbia and 49 pounds of lunar material inside a system of biological barriers. The quarantine cl…