Are You a Moon Landing Expert?

Moon Landings: Key Facts and Figures

• The Soviet Union's Luna 2 was the first human-made object to touch the Moon's surface on 13 September 1959.

• The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon on 20 July 1969.

• There were six crewed US landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013.

• The United States is the only country to have successfully conducted crewed missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972.

• The Chinese Chang'e 4 spacecraft made the first landing on the far side of the Moon on 3 January 2019.

• The Soviet Union achieved the first uncrewed lunar soil sample return with the Luna 16 probe on 24 September 1970.

• Twelve Soviet and US spacecraft used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface between 1966 and 1976.

• Many missions were failures at launch, including Luna 15, Luna 18, and Luna 23, and the US Surveyor 4.

• India's Moon Impact Probe crashed into the Moon's surface on 14 November 2008, while the European Space Agency's SMART-1 executed a controlled crash impact on 3 September 2006.

• A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon, with the last being Gene Cernan on Apollo 17 on 14 December 1972.

• To land on the Moon, a spacecraft must first leave Earth's gravity well and then decelerate to less than about 160 kilometres per hour to land intact.

• The intense efforts devoted in the 1960s to achieving a human Moon landing were part of the political context of its historical era, including the Space Race and Cold War tensions between the US and Soviet Union.Uncrewed lunar and interplanetary missions by the United States and Soviet Union from 1960 to 1976

• NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a modular spacecraft design for lunar and interplanetary missions known as Mariners and Rangers

• The first Ranger missions were Block I prototypes with various radiation detectors and instruments to measure the magnetosphere, but both failed to leave low Earth parking orbit after launch

• Block II Ranger missions attempted to accomplish the first Moon landing with a seismometer package, but only Ranger 4 reached the Moon in an uncontrolled crash impact on the far side of the Moon

• Block III Ranger missions replaced the landing capsule with a heavier, more capable television system to support landing site selection for upcoming Apollo crewed Moon landing missions and successfully captured high-resolution photographs of the Moon during descent

• The Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft performed the first successful soft Moon landing in 1966 with airbags protecting its ejectable capsule and returned panoramic photographs from the lunar surface

• Luna 16, 20, and 24 were the first robotic probes to land on the Moon and safely return a sample of lunar soil back to Earth

• The Soviet Lunokhod robotic lunar rovers successfully operated on the Moon for 10 and 4 months, covering 10.5 km and 37 km respectively

• The U.S. Surveyor program made five successful uncrewed Moon landings and was part of an effort to locate a safe site on the Moon for a human landing and test landing systems required for a controlled touchdown

• Both the U.S. and Soviet Union progressed into missions featuring lunar orbit as a prerequisite to a crewed Moon landing, with the primary goal of extensive photographic mapping of the entire lunar surface for the selection of crewed landing sites

• The discovery of mass concentrations beneath the lunar surface, or "mascons," by initial lunar orbiters posed a danger to crewed missions and greatly disturbed the orbits of low-altitude satellites around the Moon

• The Soviet Zond spacecraft program focused on achieving a crewed circumlunar loop flight prior to a crewed lunar landing to test high-speed reentry techniques, while the U.S. bypassed this step and never developed a separate spacecraft for this purpose.Human Moon Landings and Uncrewed Crash Landings: A Brief History

• The Soviet Union launched the first human spaceflight in 1961, followed by the US in 1962.

• The US demonstrated capabilities for a crewed lunar landing mission through the Gemini program in 1965-1966.

• The Soviet Zond program aimed to loop a cosmonaut around the Moon and return them immediately to Earth, but was terminated due to significant development problems and the success of the US Apollo lunar landing program.

• The US Apollo program required development of the large Saturn V launch vehicle, which achieved a perfect record of zero catastrophic failures or launch vehicle-caused mission failures in thirteen launches.

• The Apollo 8 mission carried out the first human trip to the Moon in 1968, orbiting the Moon ten times before returning safely to Earth.

• The Apollo 11 mission made the first crewed landing on the Moon in 1969, followed by five more successful Apollo lunar landings through 1972.

• The US Moon landings required the development of advanced technology, including the Saturn V launch vehicle, the Lunar Module, and spacesuits.

• The success of the US Apollo program was due to the support of President Kennedy and Johnson, who managed to swing public opinion in favor of the program despite political opposition.

• The Soviet Union attempted to compete with the US through the development of the Soyuz and N1 launcher rocket, but experienced coordination problems and launch failures.

• Uncrewed crash landings on the Moon have been carried out by multiple countries, including Japan, the US, India, China, and Luxembourg.Moon Landings: A Summary of Uncrewed Soft Landings and Attempts

• China's Chang'e 3 soft-landed a rover on the Moon on 14 December 2013, making it the country's first soft landing on another celestial body.

• Chang'e 4 became the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon on 3 January 2019, with the Yutu-2 rover still operational, surviving more than 1000 days on the lunar surface as of July 2022.

• Israel's Beresheet lunar lander attempted a landing on the Moon's surface on 11 April 2019 but crashed due to a main engine failure in the final descent.

• India's Chandrayaan 2 lost contact with the Vikram lander at an altitude of 2.1 km (1.3 mi) after a rough braking phase on 7 September 2019.

• China's Chang'e 5 landed and collected the first lunar soil samples in over 40 years on 6 December 2020, and then returned the samples to Earth.

• The Huygens probe of the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn performed a successful moon landing on Titan in 2005.

• Russia's Luna 25 lander is currently scheduled to launch in mid-2023.

• NASA's Artemis program aims to return to the Moon with new launch systems.

• Empirical evidence, including laser beams bounced off retroreflector arrays left on the Moon by Apollo 11, 14, and 15, and high-resolution photos of the Apollo landing sites taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, proves equipment was successfully transported to the surface of the Moon.

• Some conspiracists hold that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax, but in 2016, then-U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged that the Moon landing was not a hoax.