Meet the Moonman

One of the most reproduced NASA images, this photograph of an Apollo 11 astronaut on the Moon shows Buzz Aldrin, not Neil Armstrong as many believe.  

Armstrong served as photographer—he can be seen reflected in Aldrin’s visor. Aldrin recalled Armstrong saying, “Stop and turn.”

This image—the space–suited Apollo astronaut standing and facing the camera—became an iconic symbol of American accomplishment and was reproduced in books, films, television, and items of popular culture.

Perhaps one of the best known reinterpretations of the famous photo is MTV’s “Moonman” statuette.  

When MTV hit the airways in 1981, it debuted with footage of the Apollo 11 launch followed by an astronaut planting a flag with an MTV logo on the moon.  MTV founder Bob Pittman explained in a 2006 interview that MTV was intended to be a different type of television, “a network that would be about the network, rather than the individual programs.” Originally, they had intended to use the image of astronauts accompanied by Neil Armstrong’s famous quote. When Armstrong’s lawyer declined their request to use the quote, it was too late. They had already developed their marketing and promotion strategy around the man on the Moon – as the image for taking a giant leap. They launched with the images but not the voice.

The Moonman animation played at the top of the hour for the next five years, so when it came time to design the VMA award, it was the natural choice.  

While the “Moonman” is very reminiscent of the original NASA photograph of Buzz Aldrin, it isn’t an identical replica. MTV’s “Moonman” holds onto a flag, with one foot floating, and a bootprint under him. “The whole idea was, the statue had to be balancing on one leg, like anti-gravity and floating,” Gorman explained, crediting the details to the magic of the statuette’s design.  

The story of the “Moonman” statuette came full circle in 1996, when Pepsi, one of MTV’s corporate sponsors, paid to have a VMA award statue flown to the Russian Mir space station for the Video Music Awards show. The statuette was lightened for the flight, removing the base. (The regular statuette weighs in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces, the lightened statuette at just 4 pounds.) The cosmonauts had the statuette on hand during the downlink with host Dennis Miller on the live broadcast. Ultimately, the pressures of live television and delays in voice transmission and language translation made their conversation very awkward, but the event fit the VMAs' reputation as an unconventional awards show. 

This blog post was adapted from the online exhibit “Out of this World.”