It was at that instant—at 04:06:38:22 elapsed time— that a yellow caution light came on and the first of what turned out to be several computer program alarms sounded inside the LM. With only the slightest touch of urgency in his voice, Neil squeezed his comm switch and told Houston: “Program alarm.” Three seconds later he added, “It's a 1202.” “Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm,” Neil quickly asked, not knowing which of the dozens of alarms 1202 represented. It took Mission Control only fifteen seconds to respond:“We got you we're Go on that alarm.” The problem with the computer was not a critical one. Eagle's descent could continue. “We had gone that far and we wanted to land,” Neil asserted. “We didn't want to practice aborts. We were focusing our attention on doing what was required in order to complete the landing.” The 1202 alarm was caused by an overload in the onboard computer incited by the inflow of landing radar data. Fortunately,twenty-six-year-old Steve Bales—the lead specialist in LM navigation andc omputer software on Flight Director Gene Kranz's White Team—quickly determined that the landing would not be jeopardized by the overflow, because the computer had been programmed to ignore landing radar data whenever there were more important computations to make. Two more times in the next four minutes, the 1202 flashed on. Eagle was only 3,000 feet above the lunar surface. Seven seconds after the third 1202 alarm, the situation grew more intense when a new alarm came on—a 1201. 04:06:42:15 Aldrin: Program alarm—1201. 04:06:42:22 Armstrong: 1201! [Pause] Okay, 2,000 at 50. [This meant that the LM was now 2,000 feet above the lunar surface and dropping at a rate of 50 feet per second,which was significantly slower than previously in the descent.] It took Mission Control only an instant to realize that the 1201 alarm was also not a dangerous problem. 04:06:42:25 CapCom: Roger, 1201 alarm. We're Go. Same type. We're Go.
