NASA`s illustrations plotting Armstrong`s first steps on the moon up for sale!

London: Neil Armstrong`s first steps on the moon were sketched out ahead of the historic Apollo 11 mission, reveal a series of NASA documents, which are set to go under the hammer next week.

The drawings depict how Armstrong, who died last weekend aged 82, would look during his two-and-a-half hour moonwalk. They were originally given to journalists in April 1969 ahead of the mission in July of that year, but found their way into the hands of a British collector who has spent a lifetime amassing the impressive haul, the Daily mail reported. Other diagrams in the haul show how the Lunar Module would separate from the Command Module and how it would land. The collection also includes typed menus that reveal what Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins would have eaten during their lunar mission. On a typical day breakfast was a fruit cocktail, sausage patties, bread cubes, cocoa and a grapefruit drink, while lunch was a frankfurter, apple sauce, chocolate pudding and orange grapefruit drink. For dinner the astronauts tucked into spaghetti with meat sauce, pork and scalloped potatoes, pineapple fruitcake and grape punch. Other items in the collection include pieces of meteorites, moon dust paintings and a tape log featuring the doomed 1970 Apollo 13 mission. The collection also includes official NASA diagrams of space rockets, signed books and posters by Armstrong and other astronauts, official NASA badges, models of space aircraft and even the actual orange juice container chemist Helen Sharman drank from when she became the first Briton in space in 1991. The collector, a lecturer in astronomy and aeronautics and a fellow of the Royal Astronautics Society and the British Interplanetary Society, collected the pieces from the late 1960s when he was a schoolboy. It is believed he amassed the haul by contacting NASA directly after being unable to find the items on sale in the UK. “The collection has everything anyone could ever imagine as regards the space race,” said Ian Crawford, sales room manager at Frank Marshall auctioneers in Knutsford. The collection, to be auctioned on September 4, is expected to fetch a minimum of 10,000 pounds. ANI