The secret feuds and disgusting truths at the center of historic Apollo 11 landing revealed - as mission hits major milestone

The one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind on the moon has hit a major milestone.

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the epic Apollo 11 moon landing, which saw Neil Armstrong become the first human to walk on the lunar surface.

While the mission was a historical milestone for the US, the celebrated moment hid secret feuds and the disgusting truth that the moon had been contaminated with human feces.

The Apollo missions left 96 bags of poop on the moon - and they're still there to this day - but that wasn't the only baggage astronauts brought with them. 

The Saturn V rocket took off at 9:32am ET from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on  about five years after former President John F Kennedy delivered a 46-minute speech that took America into space.

'Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others,' he late president said while standing behind the lectern during a joint session of Congress on  May 25, 1961

'We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share...,' the late president said while standing behind the lectern during a joint session of Congress.

'First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.'

The Apollo 11 crew included 38-year-old commander Armstrong, 39-year-old Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, the pilot of Eagle and former test pilot 38-year-old Michael Collins, whose job was to navigate and stay on board the command module.

The men strapped in the  service module Columbia, which also carried the Eagle lunar module that would take Armstrong and Aldrin to the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.

Armstrong was first to step out of Eagle, followed by Aldrin - but what many people may not know is that mission drove a wedge between the men. 

NASA chose Armstrong to make the famous step, but months leading up to the launch, Aldrin was convinced the honor would be his.

George E. Mueller, NASA's associate administrator for manned spaceflight at the time, told several people and some members of the press that Aldrin would be the one to make the first footprint. 

But as the launch grew closer, the narrative shifted. Rumors that Armstrong, not Aldrin, would be the first man on the moon began to spread.

NASA knew that whoever it chose to be the first man down the ladder of Apollo 11 would become an instant celebrity. 

The decision ultimately came down to personality differences between Armstrong and Aldrin.

They needed someone confident and collected, with no ego, like Armstrong. By comparison, Aldrin seemed a little too desperate for fame. 

But Aldrin felt strongly that he was the right choice. 

Not only was he  an astronaut, but he was also a member of the United States Air Force. 

Armstrong, on the other hand, was a civilian, and Aldrin felt that giving the limelight to his fellow astronaut would be an insult to the service.

Aldrin claimed he aired his frustrations with Armstrong, although Armstrong later said he couldn't recall the conversation. 

Regardless if the conversation took place, the Ohio native did not turn the opportunity down.

Aldrin's next plan of action was to convince his colleagues, specifically Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. 

The men met when they were selected for the third group of astronauts in November of 1963 and trained together the following year.

Cernan said Aldrin 'came flapping into my office at the Manned Spaceflight Center one day like an angry stork, laden with charts and graphs and statistics, arguing what he considered to be obvious – that he, the lunar module pilot, and not Neil Armstrong, should be the first down the ladder on Apollo 11.'

He also described the encounter as 'offensive and ridiculous.'

However, Aldrin later penned a book where he noted the meeting was far less dramatic than Cernan had claimed.

Aldrin wrote that during training, he realized he didn't want the fame and responsibility that would come with being the first man on the moon. 

On April 14, 1969, NASA made the decision official - Armstrong would be the first man on the moon. 

Whether this led to any further conflict between Aldrin and his colleagues remains lost to history.

The journey to the moon took three days, three hours, and 49 minutes, and just like any human, the crew had to relieve themselves.

But going to the bathroom on a spaceship looks nothing like it does here on Earth. 

Even with the technology we have today, pooping in space is a cumbersome experience. 

Astronauts are trained to strap into special toilets that suck solid waste into garbage bags, which are then placed in airtight containers.

But there was no toilet on Apollo 11, or any other Apollo spacecraft for that matter. 

In fact, the first toilet wasn't installed on a US spacecraft until the 1980s. 

So, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had to 'do it in the suit.' 

Each of them wore a 'urine collective device' under their spacesuits, which was essentially a diaper with a roll-on cuff to provide sanitary protection.  

The collected urine would then be transferred through a rubber tube into a liquid waste tank - but pooping on the Apollo 11 spacecraft was a lot trickier. 

The astronauts used 'fecal bags,' which were essentially plastic bags taped to the buttocks to capture feces. 

Aligning the bag's opening with the flap at the back of the astronauts' spacesuits was also challenging. 

The entire process could take roughly 45 minutes, according to one Apollo astronaut's estimate, and it would get messy. 

On the Apollo 10 mission, which only orbited the moon, astronaut Tom Strafford said: 'Get me a napkin quick. 

'There's a turd floating through the air,' according to a NASA transcript. 

After doing their business, the Apollo 11 astronauts' sealed up the baggie, added some bactericide, and 'kneaded' it to mix it all together. 

Most of the baggies went into larger human waste bags, except for a few that the astronauts brought back to Earth for testing. 

After Apollo 11 finally touched down on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, the astronauts had to offload some weight. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to make the nearly 500,000 mile journey back home.

While preparing for the flight back to Earth, Armstrong and Aldrin spent about eight minutes tossing anything that wasn't necessary from the spacecraft, including bags of human waste. 

From 1961 to 1975, the Apollo missions left almost 100 bags of, urine, feces and vomit on the moon. 

Some scientists think we should retrieve the bags just in case some of the bacteria inside them may have survived. If so, that would tell us a lot about how life can persist in extremely harsh environments.

But other experts are convinced there's no way that bacteria could have survived the moon's deep cold and harsh solar radiation.