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Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Mike Collins were the first to go to the Moon.
More than 400,000 people worked to get them there. There were six more Apollo missions. But just 12 men walked on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972. This is how they got there and back.
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 in disaster on the launchpad. That was in January 1967. A fire in the capsule killed astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. It was a sad reminder that even the best plans can go wrong. ▶
◀ Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 went well. Space travel began to feel like no big deal. That ended in April 1970 with Apollo 13. The spacecraft was rocked by a small explosion after two days. The astronauts on that mission were Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert. They spent four days trying to get back to Earth. Here is Mission Control just 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 surface first?
They hit at the same time! There was no air to slow the feather down. It fell at the same speed as the hammer.
