The Apollo Moon landings

Between July 1969 and December 1972, twelve astronauts walked on the Moon and brought back 382 kg of rock and soil.

A goal with a deadline

On 25 May 1961, President John F. Kennedy set the United States a national goal: land people on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. NASA chose a plan called lunar orbit rendezvous in 1962. A Saturn V rocket would launch a three-part spacecraft: the command module, where the crew lived and flew; the service module, with the engine and supplies; and the lunar module, a separate lander that would take two of the three astronauts down to the surface and bring them back up to the waiting command module in lunar orbit.

The way there was built step by step. Apollo 7 tested the spacecraft in Earth orbit in October 1968. In December 1968, Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders flew Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to the vicinity of the Moon. Apollo 9 tested the full spacecraft, lunar module included, in March 1969, and in May 1969 Apollo 10 rehearsed everything except the landing itself. The program also had a terrible cost: on 27 January 1967, a fire during a launch pad test killed the Apollo 1 crew, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.

Apollo 11

Apollo 11 launched on 16 July 1969 with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. On 20 July, Armstrong and Aldrin flew the lunar module Eagle down while Collins stayed in orbit in the command module Columbia. Armstrong steered by hand over the last part to avoid a crater and landed in the Sea of Tranquility, about four miles beyond the planned point. Hours later he stepped onto the surface and said: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin followed about 20 minutes later. NASA estimates that 650 million people watched on television.

The two moonwalkers spent 21 hours 36 minutes on the Moon, of which a little over two and a half hours were outside. They collected samples, set up a seismometer, a solar wind experiment and the Laser Ranging Retroreflector, and left a commemorative plaque along with medallions honouring the Apollo 1 crew and two cosmonauts who had died. Then Eagle's upper stage lifted off, docked with Columbia, and the crew splashed down in the Pacific on 24 July 1969, about 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet.

Five more landings

Apollo 12 followed in November 1969, when Pete Conrad and Alan Bean made a pinpoint landing in the Ocean of Storms. Apollo 13 never landed: an explosion on board in April 1970 forced the crew to loop round the Moon and come home, and the ground team and crew brought them back safely. Its looping path also set the record for the farthest humans had travelled from Earth, 400,171 km, which stood for 56 years. Apollo 14 launched on 31 January 1971 and Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell explored the Fra Mauro highlands.

The last three missions stayed longer and drove. Apollo 15, launched on 26 July 1971, took David Scott and James Irwin to Hadley-Apennine with the first Lunar Roving Vehicle. Apollo 16 took John Young and Charles Duke to the Descartes Highlands in April 1972. Apollo 17 launched on 7 December 1972 and landed in the Taurus-Littrow valley. It carried Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and the first astronaut-scientist on the Moon, with commander Eugene Cernan. They collected a record amount of samples over three moonwalks, and Cernan was the last person to leave footprints there.

What Apollo left behind

In six landings the astronauts collected 2,196 samples weighing 382 kg (842 pounds) in all, and scientists are still studying them. A 2025 NASA-supported study of tiny zircon crystals in the samples dated a huge impact on the early Moon to 4.338 billion years ago. The astronauts also set up science stations whose laser reflectors are still used for distance measurements today. NASA counts 24 American astronauts who travelled from Earth to the Moon between 1968 and 1972, and 12 who walked on it.