"robot lunar rover to land on the Moon was the Soviet vessel Lunokhod 1 on November 17, 1970, as part of the Lunokhod programme. To date, the last human to stand on the Moon was Eugene Cernan, who as part of the mission Apollo 17, walked on the Moon in December 1972. ""See also:"" A full list of lunar Apollo astronauts. Moon rock samples were brought back to Earth by three Luna missions (Luna 16, 20, and 24) and the Apollo missions 11 through 17 (except Apollo 13, which aborted its planned lunar landing). From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s"
"Moon landing A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013. To date, the United States is"
"have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month period starting on 20 July 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17. Cernan was the last to step off the lunar surface. All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility. In order to go to the Moon,"
"Apollo 16 Apollo 16 was the tenth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands. The second of the so-called ""J missions,"" it was crewed by Commander John Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:54 PM EST on April 16, 1972, the mission lasted 11 days, 1 hour, and 51 minutes, and concluded at 2:45 PM EST on April 27. Young and Duke spent 71 hours—just"
"of memorial items to Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, and Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. The Apollo 11 EVA lasted two and a half hours. Each of the subsequent five landings was allotted a progressively longer EVA period; the crew of Apollo 17 spent over 22 hours exploring the lunar surface. In a 2010 interview, Armstrong explained that NASA limited their Moon walk because they were unsure how the spacesuits would cope with the Moon's extremely high temperature. After they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for the liftoff from the"
"a total of over 20 hours EVA. Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo program, landing in the Taurus–Littrow region in December 1972. Eugene Cernan commanded Ronald E. Evans and NASA's first scientist-astronaut, geologist Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt. Schmitt was originally scheduled for Apollo 18, but the lunar geological community lobbied for his inclusion on the final lunar landing. Cernan and Schmitt stayed on the surface for just over three days and spent just over 23 hours of total EVA. Source: ""Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference"" (Orloff 2004) The Apollo program returned over of lunar rocks and"
"Lunar Module ""Falcon"", with Scott and Irwin aboard, landed on the Moon on July 30, 1971, and remained there for just under 67 hours. The mission set a number of space records and was the first to use the Lunar Rover. Scott and Irwin rode it to explore the area around the landing site during three periods of extravehicular activity (EVA). On August 2, before finishing the final EVA and entering the Lunar Module, Scott used a special postmarking device to cancel a first day cover of two stamps, whose designs depicted lunar astronauts and a rover, commemorating the 10th"
"not only the large Descent Stages of the lunar landers left behind but also tracks of the astronauts' walking paths in the lunar dust. Moon landing A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and"
"investigate the possibility of relatively new volcanic activity in the same area. Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after a 12-day mission. Apollo 17 is the most recent manned Moon landing and the most recent time humans travelled beyond low Earth orbit. It was also the first mission to have no one on board who had been a test pilot; X-15 test pilot Joe Engle lost the lunar module pilot assignment to Schmitt, a geologist. The mission broke several records: the longest moon landing, longest total extravehicular activities (moonwalks), largest lunar sample, and longest time in"
"lunar landing on February 5 in the Fra Mauro formation – originally the target of the aborted Apollo 13 mission. During the two lunar EVAs, of Moon rocks were collected, and several scientific experiments were performed. Shepard hit two golf balls on the lunar surface with a makeshift club he had brought with him. Shepard and Mitchell spent 33 hours on the Moon, with almost 9 hours of EVA. In the aftermath of Apollo 13, several modifications had been made to the service module electrical power system to prevent a repeat of that accident, including a redesign of the oxygen"
"Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module ""Eagle"" on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours after landing on July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC; Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Command Module Pilot Michael Collins piloted the command module ""Columbia"" alone"
"life support system (PLSS) outside the LM. The F mission was successfully carried out on Apollo 10 in May 1969 by Gemini veterans Thomas P. Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan. Stafford and Cernan took the LM to within of the lunar surface. The G mission was achieved on Apollo 11 in July 1969 by an all-Gemini veteran crew consisting of Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong and Aldrin performed the first landing at the Sea of Tranquility at 20:17:40 UTC on July 20, 1969. They spent a total of 21 hours, 36 minutes on the surface, and"
"ended on August 7. At the time, NASA called it the most successful manned flight ever achieved. Commander David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin spent three days on the Moon, including 18 hours outside the spacecraft on lunar extravehicular activity (EVA). The mission landed near Hadley rille, in an area of the Mare Imbrium called ""Palus Putredinus"" (Marsh of Decay). The crew explored the area using the first lunar rover, which allowed them to travel much farther from the lunar module (LM) than had been possible on missions without the rover. They collected of lunar surface material. At"
"a Moon landing took place in 1962 during the Rangers 3, 4 and 5 missions flown by the United States. All three Block II missions basic vehicles were 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of , and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. This lander (code-named ""Tonto"") was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquid freon. A 42 kg (56 pounds)"
"at latitude 38.28 N, and longitude 35.00 W. Luna 17 carried Lunokhod 1, the first rover to be deployed on the Moon. Lunokhod 1, a remote-controlled rover, was successfully deployed and undertook a mission lasting several months. In 1971, the crewed Apollo 15 mission landed in the southeastern region of Mare Imbrium, between Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountains. Commander David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin spent three days on the surface of the Moon, including 18½ hours outside the spacecraft on lunar extra-vehicular activity. Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden remained in orbit and acquired hundreds of high-resolution"
"Tranquility Base Tranquility Base (Latin: Statio Tranquillitatis) is the site on the Moon where, in 1969, humans landed and walked on another celestial body for the first time. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 crewmembers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module ""Eagle"" at approximately 20:17:40 UTC. Six hours later, the two astronauts exited the spacecraft and spent 2 hours 31 minutes on the lunar surface, examining and photographing it, setting up some scientific experiment packages, and collecting of dirt and rock samples for return to Earth. They lifted off the surface on July 21 at 17:54"
"on the lunar surface on June 2, 1966, on the ""Oceanus Procellarum"". This location was at . The duration of the spaceflight of ""Surveyor 1"" was about 63 hours, 30 minutes. ""Surveyor I's"" lunar launch weight was about , and its landing weight (minus expended maneuvering propellant, its solid-fueled retrorocket (which had been jettisoned), and its radar altimeter system) was about . ""Surveyor 1"" transmitted video data from the Moon beginning shortly after its landing through July 14, 1966, but with a period of no operations during the two-week long lunar night of June 14, 1966 through July 7, 1966."
"General Relativity. Viking 1 Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with ""Viking 2"") sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. On July 20, 1976, it became the second spacecraft to soft-land on Mars, and the first soft lander to successfully perform its mission. (The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars was the Soviet Union's Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, which stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds.) ""Viking 1"" held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of days (over 6¼ years) or Martian solar days, until that record was broken by ""Opportunity"" on May"
"Different technologies have been developed to assist long-term space exploration and may be adapted for habitation on Mars. The existing record for the longest consecutive space flight is 438 days by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, and the most accrued time in space is 878 days by Gennady Padalka. The longest time spent outside the protection of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belt is about 12 days for the Apollo 17 moon landing. This is minor in comparison to the 1100 day journey planned by NASA as soon as the year 2028. Scientists have also hypothesized that many different biological functions can"
"Apollo 14 Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the United States Apollo program, and the third to land on the Moon. It was the last of the ""H missions,"" targeted landings with two-day stays on the Moon with two lunar EVAs, or moonwalks. Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell launched on their nine-day mission on Sunday, January 31, 1971, at 4:03:02 p.m. EST. Liftoff was delayed forty minutes and two seconds, due to launch site weather restrictions, the first such delay in the Apollo program. Shepard and Mitchell made their"
"Chang'e 3 mission. It is China's first lunar rover, part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program undertaken by China National Space Administration (CNSA). The lunar rover is called ""Yutu"", or ""Jade Rabbit"", a name selected in an online poll. The rover encountered operational difficulties after the first 14-day lunar night, and was unable to move after the end of the second lunar night, yet it continued to gather valuable data until it officially ceased all operations on August 3, 2016. Yutu set the record for the longest operational rover on the Moon's surface. Chinese mission with"
"of Apollo 11 three flights later. Neil Armstrong got this honor by virtue of being Borman's backup commander. NASA contracted to have 15 flight-worthy Saturn Vs produced. Apollo 11 achieved the first landing with the sixth Saturn V, leaving nine for follow-on landings. The following landing sites were chosen for these missions, planned to occur at intervals of approximately four months through July 1972. The last five missions were J-class missions using the Extended Lunar Module, capable of three-day stays on the Moon and carrying the lunar rover: As the later missions were up to three years out, little detailed"
"Apollo 12 Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon. It was launched on November 14, 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Commander Charles ""Pete"" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms. Unlike the first landing on Apollo 11, Conrad"
"the landing of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the Moon. Six such successful landings were achieved through 1972, with one failure on Apollo 13. The N1 rocket suffered four catastrophic unmanned launch failures between 1969 and 1972, and the Soviet government officially discontinued its manned lunar program on June 24, 1974, when Valentin Glushko succeeded Korolyov as General Spacecraft Designer. Both nations went on to fly relatively small, non-permanent manned space laboratories Salyut and Skylab, using their Soyuz and Apollo craft as shuttles. The US launched only one Skylab, but"
"Gemini mission. As pilot of Gemini 5 he, along with his commander Gordon Cooper, set a new space endurance record of eight days. The duration of the Gemini 5 flight was actually 7 days 22 hours and 55 minutes, surpassing the then-current Russian record of five days. Eight days was the time required for the first crewed lunar landing missions. Conrad facetiously referred to the Gemini 5 capsule as ""a flying garbage can"". Conrad tested many spacecraft systems essential to the Apollo program. He was also one of the smallest of the astronauts, 5 feet 6½ inches (1.69 meters) tall,"
"date only) three-person space walk. This 8 hour and 29 minute space walk, the longest in history, broke a twenty-year-old record that was held by Apollo 17 astronauts. The STS-49 record endured for 9 years until being surpassed by James Voss and Susan Helms on the ISS, and now stands in second place for EVA duration. The mission concluded on May 16, 1992 with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base after orbiting the Earth 141 times in 213 hours and traveling 3.7 million miles (5.9 million kilometres). Mr. Hieb was the payload commander on the second flight of the"
"Buzz Aldrin Buzz Aldrin (; born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.; January 20, 1930) is an American engineer, former astronaut, and fighter pilot. As lunar module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission, he and mission commander Neil Armstrong were the first two humans to land on the Moon. Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Aldrin graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1951, with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was commissioned in the United States Air Force, and served as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. He flew 66 combat missions and"
"Viking 1 Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with ""Viking 2"") sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. On July 20, 1976, it became the second spacecraft to soft-land on Mars, and the first soft lander to successfully perform its mission. (The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars was the Soviet Union's Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, which stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds.) ""Viking 1"" held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of days (over 6¼ years) or Martian solar days, until that record was broken by ""Opportunity"" on May 19, 2010."
"as a nominal circular orbit above the Moon's surface. Initial lunar orbit insertion was an ellipse with a perilune of and an apolune of , at an inclination of 12° from the lunar equator. This was then circularized at by , with an orbital period of 128.7 minutes. The effect of lunar mass concentrations (""mascons"") on the orbit was found to be greater than initially predicted; over the course of the ten lunar orbits lasting twenty hours, the orbital distance was perturbated to by . Apollo 8 achieved a maximum distance from Earth of . Apollo 8 launched at 12:51:00"
"could have given the Soviet space program further 'firsts' including a long duration flight of 20 days, a spacewalk by a woman and an untethered spacewalk. The Soviets continued striving for the first lunar mission with the huge N-1 rocket, which exploded on each of four unmanned tests shortly after launch. The Americans won the race to land men on the moon with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. In 1971, the Soyuz 11 mission resulted in the deaths of three cosmonauts when the crew capsule depressurized during preparations for re-entry. This accident resulted in the only human deaths to"
"18 hours and 35 minutes of the mission time (an additional 33 minutes was used to do a stand-up EVA by opening the LM's docking hatch to survey the surroundings and take photographs). Irwin and David Scott's mission was more science-based than previous missions, which meant that they received intensive geological training to meet the demanding nature of the J-Mission profile. This extra training is credited with allowing them to make one of the most important discoveries of the Apollo era, the Genesis Rock. Apollo 15 landed in the Moon's Hadley-Apennine region, noted for its mountains and rilles. As a"
"astronauts to practice techniques of avoiding wasted muscle energy. On January 16, 1969, Soviet cosmonauts Aleksei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khrunov transferred from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4, which were docked together. This was the second Soviet EVA, and it would be almost another nine years before the Soviets performed their third. American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin performed the first EVA on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969 (UTC), after landing their Apollo 11 Lunar Module spacecraft. This first Moon walk, using self-contained portable life support systems, lasted 2 hours 36 minutes. A total of fifteen Moon walks"
"way back to Earth. It splashed down in the Pacific east of Wake Island at 16:50 UTC (05:50 local time) on July 24. The total mission duration was 195:18:35. Divers passed biological isolation garments (BIGs) to the astronauts, and assisted them into the life raft. Though the chance of bringing back pathogens from the lunar surface was considered remote, it was still a possibility. The astronauts were winched on board the recovery helicopter, and flown to the aircraft carrier , where they spent the Earth-based portion of 21 days of quarantine. On August 13, the three astronauts rode in parades"