Which spaceship landed on the moon first

At GET, the service module propulsion system was reignited, and the orbit was made nearly circular 66 by 54 nautical miles above the surface of the Moon. Each orbit took two hours. Photographs taken from lunar orbit provided broad views for the study of regional lunar geology. At GET, the LM descent engine was fired for approximately 29 seconds, and the descent to the lunar surface began. At GET, the LM descent engine was started for the last time and burned until touchdown on the lunar surface.

Eagle landed on the Moon hr, 45 min and 40 sec after launch. Landed on the Moon? But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. It was a feat for the ages. On July 20, , American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar landing module Eagle, and became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

Nearly , miles from Earth, Armstrong spoke these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's The non-stop campaign of testing and launches was also a race against time—specifically to honor slain president John F. The Eagle The event was the culmination of a technological race started by President John F. Kennedy in with the goal of beating The moment is etched in the collective memory of an entire generation—the blurry black-and-white image of Neil Armstrong descending the stairs of the Apollo 11 lunar module on July 20, to become the first human being to step foot on the moon.

Every epic moment in modern history inevitably spawns a tangled web of conspiracy theories, and the Apollo moon landings are no exception. From the moment astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface on July 21, , some believed it was all an Apollo 13 narrowly avoided a near-disaster when on-board oxygen tanks exploded in April , forcing the crew to abort a planned moon landing. All three survived. During the third lunar landing, in January , Apollo 14 , commander Alan Shepard set a new record for the farthest distance traveled on the moon: 9, feet.

He even lobbed a few golf balls into a nearby crater with a makeshift 6-iron. Apollo 15 , launched in July , was the first of three missions capable of a longer stay on the moon. In the course of three days spent on the lunar surface, achievements included collecting hundreds of pounds of lunar samples and traveling more than 17 miles in the first piloted moon buggy.

The Soviet Union had sent a remotely controlled rover to the moon , Lunokhod 1, in See a timeline of the space race and its modern-day version in private spaceflight.

After the dramatic accomplishments of the s and s, the major space agencies turned their attention elsewhere for several decades. So far, only 12 humans—all Americans and all men—have set foot on the moon.

The Clementine spacecraft mapped the moon's surface in wavelengths other than visible light, from ultraviolet to infrared. Hiding in the more than 1. The mission's end was spectacular: Prospector slammed into the moon, intending to create a plume that could be studied for evidence of water ice but none was observed. Since , the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken high-resolution maps of the lunar surface.

Within the last two decades, lunar exploration has gone truly international—and even commercial. China launched its first lunar spacecraft the same year, and India followed suit in More milestones—both for better and worse—were achieved in In January, another Chinese lander, Yutu-2, made history by becoming the first rover to touch down on the lunar farside. And in April Israel aimed for the moon with the launch of its Beresheet spacecraft.

Unfortunately, even though the spacecraft achieved lunar orbit, it crashed during its attempt to land. Unlike other spacecraft that came before it, Beresheet was built largely with private funding , heralding a new era of lunar exploration in which private companies are hoping to take the reins from governments. The TLI placed Apollo on a "free-return trajectory" - often illustrated as a figure of eight shape.

This course would have harnessed the power of the Moon's gravity to propel the spacecraft back to Earth without the need for more rocket fuel. However, when Apollo 11 neared its destination, astronauts performed a braking manoeuvre known as "lunar orbit insertion" to slow the spacecraft and cause it to go into orbit around the Moon.

From there, Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface. A total of 10 lunar modules were sent into space and six landed humans on the moon.

Once used, the ascent stages of the capsules were jettisoned and either crash-landed on the moon, burned up in Earth's atmosphere, or - in one instance - went into orbit around the Sun.

But where exactly they ended up is not known in every case. The first two Lunar Modules were used in test flights and burned up in Earth's atmosphere. Apollo 10's Lunar Module, which went to the Moon but didn't land, was jettisoned into space and went into orbit around the Sun. Apollo 13's Lunar Module performed a vital "lifeboat" role when that mission had to be aborted following an explosion.

Most of the other modules - once they had safely returned astronauts back to the Command Module in lunar orbit - were dispatched to crash-land back on the surface.

The crash sites of most are known - but no-one is quite sure where the ascent stages of Apollo 11's module Eagle or Apollo 16's module Orion ended up. How did the US put the first men on the Moon? To the Moon and beyond.