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Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Mike Collins were the first to reach the Moon.
More than 400,000 people worked behind the scenes to get them there. Apollo 11 was followed by six more Apollo missions. However, just 12 men walked on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972. This is how they got there and back again.
Fly Me to the Moon...
The mission begins at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
...and Back
The lunar module stays on the surface of the Moon for 21.5 hours. Two astronauts walk on the surface.
Space Danger
Apollo 1 ended on the launchpad in January 1967. A fire broke out in the capsule, killing astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. It was a sad reminder that even the best plans could go wrong. ▶
◀ Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 were successful. Space travel began to feel like a routine event. That ended in April 1970 with Apollo 13. The spacecraft was rocked by a small explosion two days into its mission. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert spent four days struggling to return to Earth. Here is Mission Control in tense moments before the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
Check It Out!
On the Apollo 15 mission, astronaut David Scott took a moonwalk. He dropped a hammer and a feather from the same height at the same time. Which one hit the lunar surface first, the hammer or the feather?
They hit the surface at the same time! There was no air resistance to slow the feather down. So it fell at the same rate as the hammer.
