The three-man circumlunar Apollo program set as a national goal by President John F. Kennedy in May 1961 originally encompassed twenty missions. Apollos 1–6 were test flights of the Saturn 1 and Saturn 5 boosters from May 1964 to April 1968. Apollos 7–10 were increasingly ambitious manned flights between October 1968 and May 1969: Apollo 11 fulfilled Kennedy’s fiat after expenditure of $24 billion. Because Apollo 13 was aborted in April 1970 when a malfunctioning fuel cell exploded, and Apollos 18–20 were canceled because of budgetary restraints, only a dozen Americans—including a single civilian—have trodden the lunar surface.
NEIL ARMSTRONG (US NAVY); EDWIN ALDRIN (US AIR FORCE)
Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquillity on July 21, 1969, 4 miles (6.5 km) from its target point. Armstrong was first on the moon because the module’s forward hatch hinged on the right. The plaque attached to their 5-foot-high American flag reads: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.”
CHARLES CONRAD (US NAVY); ALAN BEAN (US NAVY)
Apollo 12’s lunar module Intrepid landed in the Ocean of Storms on November 18, 1969, only 600 feet from the unmanned Surveyor 3, which soft-landed thirty-one months earlier. Conrad and Bean spent 31.5 hours on the moon, including 7.5 in two moon walks, collecting 75 pounds of samples.
ALAN SHEPARD (US NAVY); EDGAR MITCHELL (US NAVY)
Apollo 14’s lunar module Antares landed at Fra Mauro in the Sea of Rains on February 5, 1971. Forty-seven-year-old Shepard, the first American in space almost a decade earlier, also became the first man to play golf on the moon, using two balls he had smuggled aboard and a pole from a solar wind experiment.
DAVID SCOTT (US AIR FORCE); James Irwin (US Air Force)
Apollo 15’s lunar module Falcon landed at Hadley Rille on July 30, 1971, carrying the first motor vehicle on the moon, the Boeing-designed Lunar Rover. Its TV camera filmed their departure for the first time.
JOHN YOUNG (US NAVY); CHARLES DUKE (US AIR FORCE)
Apollo 16’s lunar module Orion landed at Descartes on April 21, 1972, avoiding a 25-feet-deep crater by only 10 feet. Young, who had earlier orbited the moon on Apollo 10, became the only man to do so twice.
EUGENE CERNAN (US NAVY); HARRISON SCHMITT (CIVILIAN GEOLOGIST)
Apollo 17’s lunar module Challenger landed at Taurus-Littrow on December 11, 1972. This was the longest Apollo flight (301 hours 52 minutes), spent the most time on the lunar surface (22 hours 6 minutes), and involved the biggest retrieval (249 pounds of samples).