apollo 11 trip time

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The first crewed Moon landing

Apollo 11 was the first mission to land humans on the Moon. It fulfilled a 1961 goal set by President John F. Kennedy to send American astronauts to the surface and return them safely to Earth before the end of the decade. On 21 July 1969 at 02:56:15 UTC, Neil Armstrong pressed his left foot onto the Moon and said, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind," as 530 million people watched live on television.

The mission returned 20 kilograms of rock and soil to Earth, and paved the way for 5 additional Moon landings that greatly advanced the field of lunar science.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins began their journey with a launch aboard a Saturn V rocket on the morning of 16 July 1969. Three hours later, their rocket's upper stage blasted them out of Earth orbit towards the Moon. They arrived 3 days later on 19 July and entered an initial lunar orbit of 111 by 306 kilometers. A second engine burn lowered their orbit to 100 by 113 kilometers.

On 20 July, Armstrong and Aldrin boarded their lunar module, nicknamed Eagle, and undocked it from the command module, where Collins remained. Almost the same as in the Apollo 10 rehearsal 2 months earlier, the astronauts fired Eagle’s descent engine, dropping to an orbit with a low point of 14.5 kilometers. Roughly an hour later, as the duo approached the Sea of Tranquility, they began a final powered descent to the surface.

Armstrong and Aldrin had to overcome several last-minute challenges during the landing sequence. A series of computer alarms that the crew had not seen in simulations prompted a call to Mission Control for guidance, and flight controllers advised the crew they could safely proceed. Then, Armstrong saw that the lunar module computer was guiding them toward a boulder field that was later determined to be ejecta from West Crater . Armstrong took semi-manual control of the lunar module to avoid the boulders, and then a smaller crater later named Little West, before finally landing with just 25 seconds' worth of fuel remaining.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," Armstrong famously reported after landing. The official touchdown time was 20:17:39 UTC on 20 July 1969.

Safely on the surface, Armstrong and Aldrin worked through a long checklist to ensure their spacecraft was healthy and that they would be able to lift off for the return home. The flight plan called for an optional 4-hour rest period to begin 2 hours after landing, which Armstrong and Aldrin opted to skip. It is often reported that the astronauts were too excited to rest; in reality, the rest period was an optional buffer in case Armstrong and Aldrin needed time to adapt to lunar gravity or had technical problems to work through.

EVA preparations officially began three and a half hours after landing. The lunar module hatch opened at 02:39:35 UTC on 21 July 1969, and 17 minutes later, at 02:56:15 UTC (22:56:15 EDT on 20 July 1969), Armstrong stepped off the lunar module's ladder and onto the surface.

Armstrong and Aldrin's single moonwalk lasted two and a half hours. During that time, they deployed science and engineering experiments , photographed their surroundings, displayed an American flag, read an inscription plaque, collected rock and soil samples for return to Earth, and spoke with President Richard Nixon. The astronauts verbally described their surroundings and progress for geologists, while cameras mounted inside and outside the lunar module documented some of their activities.

Landing Site

The Apollo 11 lunar module landing coordinates are 0.67416 degrees N, 23.47314 E. See here and here for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image analysis.

Armstrong and Aldrin shot roughly 125 frames during their EVA, all on magazine 40/S , using a Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera . Maps and descriptions of all photos are available.

Science and engineering experiments

Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE) : A seismometer that failed after 21 days, but provided useful initial data on lunar seismology for future Apollo missions.

The Lunar Dust Detector : Attached to the PSE, the dust detector measured the power output from a set of solar cells to determine how much dust was thrown on nearby science instruments by the lunar module ascent engine (and in the long term, from transient lunar dust).

Laser Ranging Retroreflector (LRR) : An array of small mirrors that, to this day, can be targeted by Earth-based lasers to measure the distance to the Moon. The LRR experiment has determined that the Moon is currently receding from Earth at 3.8 centimeters per year.

Solar Wind Composition Experiment : A small sheet of foil deployed and then retrieved for return to Earth, used to estimate the number of charged particles (solar wind) striking the surface.

Soil mechanics investigation : Specific experiments to investigate soil mechanics and the properties of the lunar surface. The investigation included the use of penetrometers—rods that measure the force required to penetrate to various soil depths—as well as the digging of small trenches and the collection of rocks, soil and core tubes.

After returning to the lunar module, Armstrong and Aldrin had been awake for 21 hours. The 2 astronauts slept fitfully, with Aldrin on the floor and Armstrong perched above him on the engine cowling using an improvised hammock to hold his legs off the ground. ( See here for a panorama of the inside of a lunar module ). The astronauts slept in their suits for warmth, as the cabin temperature dropped to 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 Celsius).

At 17:54 UTC on 21 July, after a total of 21 hours and 36 minutes on the surface, Armstrong and Aldrin blasted off in the lunar module's ascent stage. They rendezvoused with the command module in orbit roughly three and a half hours later, rejoined Collins in the command module, and jettisoned the lunar module. The next day, on 22 July, the crew fired their service module's engines to leave lunar orbit for their long coast back to Earth. They splashed down into the Pacific Ocean at 16:50:35 UTC on 24 July and were retrieved by the USS Hornet.

Onboard the Hornet, the crew entered a mobile quarantine facility to protect against the unlikely event that they had contracted dangerous pathogens on the lunar surface. The facility was transported back to Houston, arriving on 28 July. On 10 August, with the men showing no signs of illness 21 days after Armstrong and Aldrin's moonwalk, NASA released the crew.

Apollo 11 Timeline

"it has a stark beauty all its own." "magnificent desolation.".

—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, respectively, on the surface of the Moon

Apollo 11 Cost

NASA estimated the following direct costs for Apollo 11. Full costs of the Apollo program can be found on the " How Much Did the Apollo Program Cost? " page.

Inflation adjusted to 2019 via NASA's New Start Index (NNSI). Source: "History of Manned Space Flight." February 1975. NASA Kennedy Space Center. Located in NASA HQ Historical Reference Collection, Washington, D.C. Record Number 18194. Box 1.

Project Apollo

Starting with Apollo 7 in 1968 and culminating with Apollo 17 in 1972, NASA launched 33 astronauts on 11 Apollo missions. Twelve humans walked on the Moon.

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• All mission control film footage
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• 240 hours of space-to-ground audio
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• Share and discover moments of interest at forum.apolloinrealtime.org

This website replays the Apollo 11 mission as it happened. It consists entirely of historical material, all timed to Ground Elapsed Time--the master mission clock. Footage of Mission Control, film shot by the astronauts, and television broadcasts transmitted from space and the surface of the Moon, have been painstakingly placed to the very moments they were shot during the mission, as has every photograph taken, and every word spoken.

Upon starting the application, select whether to begin one minute before launch, or click "Now" to drop in to the mission using today's date and time, to-the-second during the anniversary.

Navigate to any moment of the mission using the time navigator at the top of the screen. The top bar is the entire mission with two bars below it providing magnification. Selecting transcript items, photos, commentary items, or guided tour moments, also jumps the mission time to the moment they occurred.

Main mission audio consists of space-to-ground (left ear), capcom loop (right ear), and on-board recorder (center, when available). Selecting a Mission Control audio channel mutes the main audio, opens the Mission Control audio panel, and plays the "live" audio of that Mission Control position. Change channels by selecting the seats in mission control. Closing the Mission Control audio panel will unmute the main audio and continue mission playback.

These 50 channels of Mission Control audio have only recently been digitized and restored, and are made publicly available here for the first time. They total over 11,000 hours in length.

Please contact Ben Feist for any inquiries.

Ben Feist Concept, research, mission data restoration, audio restoration, video, software architecture and programming. Follow @BenFeist for updates. Stephen Slater Archive Producer, historical audio/footage synchronization Chris Bennett Visual design, interface styling and programming David Charney Visual design Arnfinn Holderer Audio restoration programming Robin Wheeler Photography timing, transcript corrections

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1969 Moon Landing

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 17, 2023 | Original: August 23, 2018

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

JFK's Pledge Leads to Start of Apollo Program

The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in an appeal President Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." 

At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War -era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission , testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. 

Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire.

President Richard Nixon spoke with Armstrong and Aldrin via a telephone radio transmission shortly after they planted the American flag on the lunar surface. Nixon considered it the "most historic phone call ever made from the White House."

Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing. 

In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the far side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. That May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission.

Timeline of the 1969 Moon Landing

At 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins (1930-) aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission.

After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:17 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a now-famous message: "The Eagle has landed."

At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation.

At 10:56 p.m., as Armstrong stepped off the ladder and planted his foot on the moon’s powdery surface, he spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface 19 minutes later, and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests and spoke with President Richard Nixon (1913-94) via Houston. 

By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon—July 1969 A.D.—We came in peace for all mankind."

At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. on July 24.

How Many Times Did the US Land on the Moon?

There would be five more successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by. Apollo 13 had to abort its lunar landing due to technical difficulties. The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan (1934-2017) and Harrison Schmitt (1935-) of the Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. 

The Apollo program was a costly and labor-intensive endeavor, involving an estimated 400,000 engineers, technicians and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close to $100 billion in today's dollars). The expense was justified by Kennedy's 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and after the feat was accomplished, ongoing missions lost their viability.

Apollo 11 Photos

HISTORY Vault: Moon Landing: The Lost Tapes

On the 50th anniversary of the historic moon landing, this documentary unearths lost tapes of the Apollo 11 astronauts, and explores the dangers and challenges of the mission to the moon.

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Over half a century ago, on July 20, 1969, humans walked on the Moon for the first time. We look back at the legacy of our first small steps on the Moon and look forward to the next giant leap.

Learn about the mission

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The Mission

"we choose to go to the moon.".

The Soviet Union launched the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space on April 12, 1961. Within days of the Soviet achievement, President John F. Kennedy asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to identify a “space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win.” A little over a month later, on May 25, 1961, Kennedy stood before a joint session of Congress and called for human exploration to the Moon.

Eight years later, a Saturn V rocket carrying the three Apollo 11 astronauts blasted off from Cape Kennedy. Over a million spectators, including Vice President Spiro Agnew and former President Lyndon Johnson, came to watch the lift off.

July 20, 1969

"The Eagle has landed!"

After four days traveling to the Moon, the Lunar Module  Eagle , carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. Neil Armstrong exited the spacecraft and became the first human to walk on the moon. As an estimated 650 million people watched, Armstrong proclaimed "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Michael Collins stayed aboard the Command Module Columbia , serving as a communications link and photographing the lunar surface.

After approximately two and half hours on the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the lunar module to begin the journey home. The three astronauts splashed down in Hawaii on July 24, 1969. From there they quarantined for three weeks as a precaution against bringing contagion back from the Moon, before the festivities welcoming them home commenced. 

The Sea of Tranquility | Mare Tranquillitatis

00.67408° N latitude, 23.47297° E longitude

For the first lunar landing, the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquilitatis) was the site chosen because it is a relatively smooth and level area. It does, however, have some craters and in the last minutes before landing, Neil Armstrong had to manually pilot the lunar module to avoid a sharp-rimmed ray crater measuring some 180 meters across and 30 meters deep known as West. The lunar module landed safely some 6 km from the originally intended landing site, approximately 400 meters west of West crater and 20km south-southwest of the crater Sabine D in the southwestern part of Mare Tranquilitatis. The lunar surface at the landing site consisted of fragmental debris ranging in size from fine particles to blocks about 0.8 meter wide.

Sea of Tranquility is where Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969.

Lunar Module Pilot

Command Module Pilot

Three astronauts were selected as backups for the crew: James A. Lovell, commander; William A. Anders, command module pilot; and Fred W. Haise, lunar module pilot.

All three backup crew members would eventually fly on Apollo missions. Lovell and Haise were among the crew for Apollo 13. 

About Apollo 13

The Technology

Watching from earth, in the collection.

Take a virtual tour of the Destination Moon exhibition! This exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's unrivaled collection of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo artifacts, including Alan Shepard's Mercury spacesuit and spacecraft, a Saturn V F-1 engine, and Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit and command module Columbia.

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Apollo 11's 50th anniversary: Quick guide to the first moon landing

It's been five decades since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Here's a look at that achievement -- and what lies ahead.

• 30 years experience at tech and consumer publications, print and online. Five years in the US Army as a translator (German and Polish).

Buzz Aldrin stands on the moon beside seismic measurement gear, part of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. To the right is the lunar module Eagle.

Even Neil Armstrong couldn't remember exactly what he said at that key moment in the first-ever moon landing, NASA 's Apollo 11 mission, as he stepped onto the lunar surface. You know the line: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  And you always wonder: Didn't he mean to say, "...for a man"? 

In fairness, he did have a lot on his mind. Even listening to the recording afterward, Armstrong still wasn't quite sure.

"I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn't said -- although it actually might have been," he told biographer James R. Hansen.

A footprint left on the moon by Buzz Aldrin.

History has in fact remembered Armstrong fondly. And now we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of that moon landing . It was July 20, 1969, when Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin made cosmic history as they became the first humans ever to stand and walk on a heavenly body not called Earth.

It was a breathtaking engineering and logistical achievement. Humans had only started venturing into space less than a decade earlier -- and even then, just barely outside Earth's atmosphere. Our experience of space, which started with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in April 1961, was still quite limited when Apollo 8 made a trip 'round the moon in December 1968, the first time humans had ever broken free of Earth's orbit.

But after a total of six moon landings for the Apollo program in less than four years, that was it. Since Apollo 17 in December 1972, no one's been back to the moon. NASA spent the next several decades focusing its manned spaceflight efforts on the space shuttle and on missions to the International Space Station.

Now there are once again plans to put people on the moon. NASA says it expects to make a new moon landing by 2024 through its Artemis program , both for its own sake and as a stepping-stone toward eventual missions to Mars . Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk also have their eyes on lunar adventures.

As NASA and others mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, here's a look back at that achievement -- and at what lies ahead.

Real quick: How far away is the moon, anyway?

The distance from the Earth to the moon varies because of the moon's elliptical orbit, from about 225,000 miles (363,000 kilometers) to 252,000 miles. By comparison, the ISS is only about 250 miles away -- that is, one one-thousandth as far as the moon.

The Apollo missions needed roughly three days' travel time each way -- Apollo 11 got from Earth to lunar orbit at midday on day three of its mission. (For Apollo 15, it was about 4.5 days from Earth liftoff to touchdown on the lunar surface.)

The Apollo 11 crew (left to right): Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.

That's an awfully long way to go. Why even bother?

Two words: space race. Starting in the 1950s, the US and the Soviet Union were going at it for bragging rights and military advantage, sending rockets, satellites, dogs and monkeys, and eventually people, into the ether.

Then, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a brash declaration: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

How did the astronauts get there?

The lunar missions lifted off atop a Saturn V  rocket, to date the most powerful ever.

After separation from the Saturn rocket, the astronauts continued to the moon in the command service module. The CSM had three parts: the command module (CM), with the classic "space capsule" shape and containing the crew's quarters and flight controls; the expendable service module (SM), which provided propulsion and support systems; and the lunar module (LM), which looked like a geometry project with spindly legs and which took two astronauts to the lunar surface while a third remained in the CM.  

How did the Apollo 11 mission unfold? What exactly did Armstrong and Aldrin do?

First of all, they simply proved it could be done.

The overview: Apollo 11 lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16 and returned to Earth on July 24, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after traveling a total of 953,054 miles in eight days, three hours and 18 minutes.

On July 20, the LM (nickname: Eagle) touched down in the moon's Sea of Tranquility after a stressful final few minutes. "There were some pretty hairy moments," James Hansen, Armstrong's biographer, said in an interview. "The onboard computer was taking them down into a site that was not quite what they wanted, and Neil had to take over manually. They maybe had 20 or 30 seconds of fuel left when he actually got it down."

Apollo 11 moon landing: Neil Armstrong's defining moment

About four hours later, Armstrong, 38 years old, stepped out, just before 11 p.m. ET on the 20th, a Sunday. He was outside for about 2.5 hours, with Aldrin, 39, joining him for about 1.5 hours. They were on the moon for 21 hours, 36 minutes (including seven hours of sleep) total before returning to orbit to rejoin the third member of the crew, Michael Collins, 38, who'd been waiting, watching and worrying.

Venturing no more than 300 feet from the LM and working under a 200-degree sun, Armstrong and Aldrin -- like tourists everywhere -- took lots of photos and video, and gathered souvenirs in the form of moon rocks and soil samples. They also set up a couple of rudimentary experiments, one to measure seismic activity and another as a target for Earth-based lasers to measure the Earth-moon distance precisely, which returned data for 71 days. They left behind an American flag, some of the most famous footprints in history, a coin-size silicon disc etched in microscopic detail with messages from world leaders and a small plaque saying "We came in peace for all mankind."

Armstrong may have the most famous lines from the mission, and Collins the best book (Carrying the Fire), but Aldrin nailed the description of the moonscape: " magnificent desolation ."

Those moon rocks were a pretty big deal, right?

That's right. The Apollo 11 crew brought back 22 kilograms (almost 50 pounds) of lunar material, including rocks, modest core samples and that dusty lunar soil that's so great for making footprints. The sample included basalt (from molten lava), breccia (fragments of older rocks) and anorthosite (surface rock that may have been part of an ancient crust). Those moon rocks and other samples, from all the Apollo missions, helped scientists get a better understanding of the moon's origins .

Flight controllers at NASA's Mission Control celebrate on July 24, 1969, as the Apollo 11 astronauts return to Earth.

Tell me they brought some tunes with them

They did indeed. NASA sent along a Sony TC-50 cassette player, with a mixtape of songs for the ride up. (Apparently, the astronauts really were supposed to use it for recording notes about what they were up to.) Aldrin's selections included Glen Campbell's Galveston, Blood Sweat & Tears' Spinning Wheel and a song called Mother Country by folk singer John Stewart. Armstrong went in a different direction with Dvorak's New World Symphony and the theremin-heavy Music Out of the Moon by Samuel Hoffman.

What did they eat?

Definitely not haute cuisine. Sandwiches with spreads out of a tube, like ham salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, cheddar cheese. Snacks including peanut cubes, caramel candy, bacon bites and dried apricots, peaches and pears. Turkey dinner of a sort, with gravy and dressing -- eaten with a spoon. Drinks included water, grapefruit-orange juice, grape punch and coffee, reconstituted, of course. In addition, not long after landing on the moon, Aldrin took Holy Communion , with a wafer and a small vial of wine.

What else was going on in 1969?

It was a crazy time. Airline hijacking was a big thing, especially to Cuba. The Vietnam War was raging, as were protests against it. Honduras and El Salvador fought a "soccer war." The Stonewall Riots in New York took place in late June. Richard Nixon had only just begun his first term as US president.

Apollo software engineer Margaret Hamilton and the source code for the Apollo guidance computer

On the technology front, the US would get its first ATM in September, and the first message sent on the ARPAnet , a precursor to the internet, would happen in late October.

For about a week as May turned into June, John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their "bed-in" in Amsterdam, at which Lennon recorded Give Peace a Chance. The Beatles' Get Back was No. 1 for five weeks from May into June, and the Fifth Dimension's Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In was No. 2. David Bowie released Space Oddity on July 11. The middle of August would bring the Woodstock festival.

Debuts on TV that September and October would include Scooby-Doo, The Brady Bunch and Monty Python's Flying Circus.

And Turnabout Intruder , the final episode of the original Star Trek series, aired June 3.

How many people have been on the moon?

The Apollo missions put a total of 12 men on the lunar surface over the course of six visits. That's it. Then there were the others who've flown that astonishing distance but never touched down -- six CM pilots on the lunar landing missions, plus the crews of Apollo 8, 10 and 13. Three of those people made the trip twice, so the grand total of humans who've been as far as the moon is 24.

Here's who's been on the moon:

• Apollo 11: Armstrong and Aldrin
• Apollo 12: Pete Conrad, Alan Bean
• Apollo 14: Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell
• Apollo 15: David Scott, James Irwin
• Apollo 16: John Young, Charles Duke
• Apollo 17: Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt

The dates of those other missions: Apollo 12 took place in November 1969, Apollo 14 took place from late January to early February of 1971, Apollo 15 was in July and August of 1971, Apollo 16 happened in May 1972 and Apollo 17 -- which spent three full days on the moon -- wrapped things up in December of 1972. Apollo 13, in April 1970, had to forgo its moon landing because of a life-threatening technical problem.

What else has landed on the moon?

We've put all kinds of unmanned spacecraft on the moon, starting with the hard landing of the Soviet Union's Luna 2 in 1959. The US' first spacecraft on the moon, Ranger 4, arrived in April 1962. Both countries landed a number of other machines there during the 1960s, including five Surveyor spacecraft from the US. Only some of them were soft (or powered) landings.

Click here for To the Moon, a CNET series examining our relationship with the moon from the first landing of Apollo 11 to future human settlement on its surface.

More recently, other countries have been getting into the game. China put the Chang'e 3 onto the moon in 2013, making the first soft landing since Luna 24 in 1976. In January of this year, China's Chang'e 4 became the first spacecraft to land on the fabled dark side of the moon.

In April, Israel sent the Beresheet spacecraft to the moon, but with an unhappy ending -- it crashed there.

On Monday, India is planning to launch its Chandrayaan-2 mission , which will make the first soft landing at the lunar south pole. It's carrying a lander, a rover and an orbiter. The launch has been delayed several times, most recently on July 14.

Where does President Trump stand on missions to the moon?

NASA has been fired up for a return to the moon at least since December 2017, when President Donald Trump signed White House Space Policy Directive 1 , which urged a renewed focus on lunar missions. "Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit," the directive states, "the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations."

Curiously, Trump tweeted in May that "NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago." The tweet did go on to suggest that he still sees the moon as part of NASA's eventual missions to Mars.

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019

That came less than a month after the Trump administration said it wanted an extra $1.6 billion added to NASA's budget for next year to help pave the way for humans to return to the moon in the coming decade.

Money seems like it could be an issue, especially as Congress grapples with the federal budget for fiscal 2020. On July 17, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine testified before a Senate panel about the chilling effect that a budget freeze -- a continuing resolution to keep spending at 2019's level -- could have on plans for a return to the moon in the middle of the next decade. "It would be devastating. What we lack right now is a lander," Bridenstine said. "We don't have money in the budget right now to develop a lander."

So what comes next?

As things stand, the space agency plans to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon by 2024, in what's now known as the Artemis program, with a whole new rocket (the Space Launch System) and crew capsule ( Orion ). The program will eventually integrate a  "gateway" spacecraft that will stay in lunar orbit while missions head down to the surface. Here's the timetable:

• Late 2019 -- First commercial deliveries/landers to the moon
• 2020 -- Launch of SLS/Orion, uncrewed, in Exploration Mission-1
• 2022 -- Crew around the moon in Exploration Mission-2
• 2022 -- By December, setup of the first gateway element (the power and propulsion system) for a one-year demo in space, aboard a private rocket
• 2023 -- Land a rover, with the help of the commercial space industry
• 2024 -- Americans on the moon (including the first woman)
• 2028 -- Sustained presence on moon

NASA also sees these moon missions as preparation for eventual crewed missions to Mars , tentatively in the 2030s.

In May, NASA named some of the companies that'll pitch in with the Artemis effort, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Also in May, Amazon and Blue Origin chief Jeff Bezos unveiled a design for a Blue Moon lunar lander , which in addition to people could transport rovers to carry out scientific missions and shoot off small satellites.

When can I go?

Soon, maybe, if you have lots of disposable income or the right connections. Elon Musk has plans to send the first commercial customer, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa , on a flight around the moon in SpaceX's forthcoming BFR rocket. Maezawa plans to invite a handful of artists to join him on that weeklong flight in 2023. (The trip doesn't include a moon landing.)

Originally published June 7. Update, July 6: Adds details, including the section on moon rocks, and more information about the Apollo missions. July 15: Adds information about India's Chandrayaan-2 mission and its delay. July 17: Adds information about the NASA administrator's testimony in the Senate. July 18: Adds new launch date for Chandrayaan-2. July 20: Adds information about music and food in space during Apollo 11.

Apollo 11 Moon landing: minute by minute

Re-live the final, fraught 13 minutes of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's lunar descent

NASA recordings of the final 13 minutes of the Apollo 11 Moon landing capture the tension and the triumph of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins's historic mission. Follow the radio communications between the astronauts and Mission Control during the lunar module's descent.

When did Apollo 11 land on the Moon?

The final, critical landing phase of the Apollo 11 mission began at  20:05 GMT on 20 July 1969 . Just under 13 minutes later, at 20:17 GMT , the  Eagle lunar module landed on the Moon.

Those 13 minutes to the Moon had been meticulously planned in the years building up to the first lunar landing mission, but this was still an unprecedented challenge for the Apollo Program.

Intermittent radio signal, unfamiliar computer alarms and a rocky landing site all tested astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin to their limits during the descent to the Moon's surface. Hearing how the astronauts and Mission Control responded to these problems in real time remains one of the most extraordinary records of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

What did the astronauts say during the Apollo 11 Moon landings?

Despite signal problems, Armstrong and Aldrin managed to remain in communication with both Mission Control and third Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins orbiting above them in the command module.

Below is a full account of what was said during the landing phase, from the moment the lunar module began its powered descent to Armstrong's historic declaration: "The Eagle  has landed."

The transcript is based on NASA videos  and audio recordings of radio communications between the Apollo 11 lunar module and Mission Control. Where a phrase or term is unclear, we have attempted to explain in italics what the astronauts or Mission Control were referring to.

Buzz Aldrin: One, zero. Ignition. Ten per cent.

Aldrin is confirming that the lunar module’s engine has been fired at 10 per cent of maximum power. This firing, beginning gently, is designed to slow the Eagle down in preparation for landing. The sequence has been calculated by the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), which performs a series of calculations and operations designed to help guide the lunar module to its destination. Currently the computer is running Programme 63 (P63), which manages the braking phase of the lunar landing.

Mission Control (speaking to Michael Collins): Columbia , Houston. We’ve lost them. Tell them to go aft omni. Over.

Mission Control in Houston is struggling to establish communication with the lunar module. Without reliable data and radio communications from the lunar module, the landing may have to be aborted. Mission Control asks astronaut Michael Collins in the command module Columbia to relay a message to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin telling them to try a different aerial, the ‘aft omni-directional antenna’.

Michael Collins (to the lunar module): They’d like to use the omni.

Buzz Aldrin: OK, we’re reading you relayed to us, Mike.

Michael Collins: Say again, Neil?

Michael Collins incorrectly thinks he’s talking to Neil Armstrong.

Buzz Aldrin: I’ll leave it in Slew.

Neil Armstrong: Relay to us.

‘Slew’ essentially means that Buzz Aldrin is keeping the antenna in manual mode so he can angle the aerial himself and try to establish better communication.

Buzz Aldrin: See if they have got me now. I’ve got good signal strength in Slew.

Michael Collins: OK. You should have him now, Houston.

Mission Control: Eagle , we got you now. It’s looking good. Over.

Buzz Aldrin: OK, rate of descent looks good.

Mission Control: Eagle , Houston. Everything’s looking good here. Over.

Buzz Aldrin: Roger. Copy.

Mission Control: Eagle , Houston. After yaw-around, [use] angles S-band pitch -9, yaw +18.

Aldrin: Copy.

These are the angles that Mission Control is suggesting Aldrin use for the antenna after ‘yaw-around’ - the moment the lunar module will rotate during the next landing phase.‘Yaw’ is the term for an aircraft’s vertical axis rotation.

Aldrin: AGS and PGNS agree very closely.

Mission Control: Roger.

Aldrin is comparing the measurements from the main guidance system PGNS (Primary Guidance and Navigation System) and the back-up system AGS (Abort Guidance System).

Aldrin: Data on. Altitude’s a little high.

Armstrong: Slew?

Aldrin: Houston, I’m getting a little fluctuation in the AC voltage now.

Aldrin: Could be our meter maybe, huh?

Mission Control: Stand by. Looking good to us. You’re still looking good at three… coming up three minutes.

Aldrin: Rate of descent looks real good. Altitude’s right about on.

Armstrong: Our position checks down range show us to be a little long.

Mission Control: Roger. Copy.

While Aldrin is piloting the lunar module, Armstrong is looking through the window directly down onto the lunar surface, noting key landmarks and comparing them with notes he has prepared ahead of the mission. This is how he is able to judge that they may land “a little long”: beyond the planned landing site.

 Aldrin: AGS is showing about 2 feet per second greater rate of descent [than the PGNS].

Aldrin is once again comparing the two guidance systems available to him.

Armstrong: I show us to be about… Stand by…

Aldrin: Altitude rate looks right down the groove.

Armstrong: Roger. About three seconds long. Rolling over.

By marking the time certain landmarks pass by the window, Armstrong calculates that they are three seconds too long. This equates to about three miles too long when it comes to the landing site.

When Armstrong says, “Rolling over”, he is announcing that he is preparing to rotate the lunar module so that the legs are pointing directly down at the Moon's surface. The lunar module's landing radar is positioned on the bottom of the lunar module. After the Eagle has rotated, Armstrong, Aldrin and Mission Control should begin to receive a signal from the radar telling them how high and how fast they are travelling.

Aldrin: Well I think it’s going to drop.

Aldrin is replying to a comment from Armstrong on board to keep an eye on the signal strength for communications with Mission Control.

Mission Control: Eagle , Houston…

Aldrin: OK Houston, the ED Batts are Go at four minutes.

ED Batts are 'explosive device batteries', which supply power to the devices that help operate the descent engines. Aldrin and Mission Control accidentally talk over each other at this point in the transmission, which is why Mission Control’s all-important next instruction - to continue the mission - is repeated.

Mission Control: Roger. You are Go. You are Go to continue powered descent. You are Go to continue powered descent.

Aldrin: Roger.

Mission Control: And Eagle , Houston, we’ve got data drop-out. You’re still looking good.

As the lunar module rotates, radio reception continues to be a problem, as the static heard during this part of the recording makes clear.

Aldrin: OK, we’ve got good lock on.

Once the lunar module has 'rolled over', the landing radar is able to "lock on" to the Moon’s surface.

Aldrin: Altitude light’s out. Delta-H is minus 2,900 [feet].

Delta-H compares the landing radar altitude reading with the Primary Guidance and Navigation System (PGNS). These numbers should ideally be closely aligned. According to Aldrin, the radar shows an altitude 2,900 feet lower than that shown on the PGNS. In a few moments Armstrong will ask Mission Control to try understand why these numbers don't correlate.

Mission Control: Roger, we copy.

Aldrin: Got the Earth straight out our front window.

Armstrong: Houston, you looking at our Delta-H?

Mission Control: That’s affirmative.

Armstrong: Programme alarm.

This is the beginning of one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the Moon landing, the infamous ‘1202’ programme alarm. Mission Control does not immediately appear to register the urgency in Armstrong’s voice, and instead answers his previous query about their Delta-H.

Mission Control: It’s looking good to us. Over.

Armstrong: It’s a 1202.

Aldrin: 1202.

Neither Armstrong nor Aldrin are sure what the 1202 programme alarm means, and are asking Mission Control for guidance.

Armstrong to Aldrin: Let’s incorporate [the landing radar data.]

Armstrong to Mission Control: Give us a reading on the 1202 programme alarm.

Mission Control: Roger, we got you. We’re Go on that alarm.

Mission Control has made the decision to continue the mission, despite the potential danger highlighted by this alarm. The 1202 programme alarm was a warning from the Apollo Guidance Computer that its core processing system had been overloaded. However, the computer had been designed so that even if this occurred, mission critical programmes would take priority.

Thanks to the rapid response from Apollo Guidance Computer specialist Jack Garman in Mission Control, flight controllers understood that as long as the alarms did not come in rapid succession the mission could continue. In all, there were four 1202 alarms and one related 1201 alarm during the lunar descent.

Armstrong: Roger. 330.

Mission Control: 6 plus 25. Throttle down.

Mission Control is instructing that the engine be throttled down six minutes and 35 seconds into the burn.

Aldrin: OK, looks like about 820…

Aldrin is interrupted by Mission Control.

Mission Control: 6 plus 25, throttle down.

Aldrin: Roger. Copy.

Armstrong: 6 plus 25.

Aldrin: Same alarm, and it appears to come up when we have a 16/68 up.

Aldrin is trying to work out what the 1202 programme alarm means, and tells Mission Control that it may be linked to when he requests a data display from the computer ('16/68'). Instead of overloading the computer further, Mission Control will monitor the Delta-H reading and feed it back to Aldrin.

Mission Control: Eagle, Houston. We’ll monitor your Delta-H.

Aldrin: Yes it’s coming down beautifully.

The difference between the two computer guidance systems, Delta-H, appears to be reducing.

Armstrong: Roger. It looks good now.

Mission Control: Roger. Delta-H is looking good to us.

Aldrin: Wow! Throttle down.

Armstrong: Throttle down on time.

Mission Control: Roger. We copy throttle down.

Aldrin: You can feel it in here when it throttles down. Better than the simulator.

Aldrin is surprised by the feeling in the lunar module compared to his experience in the simulator during training. The fact that the throttle down manoeuvre has initiated at the correct time also suggests that the 1202 programme alarm has not interrupted key guidance programmes.

Mission Control: Rog.

Aldrin: AGS and PGNS look real close.

Aldrin again compares the two computer guidance systems. Remember, the Abort Guidance System (AGS) is their back-up system, and the astronauts’ only way out should something go wrong with the primary system.

Mission Control: At seven minutes you’re still looking great to us Eagle.

Aldrin: OK, I’m still on Slew so we may tend to lose as we gradually pitch over. Let me try Auto again now and see what happens.

Aldrin is trying to switch the radio antenna back to automatic mode and let the computer take care of the positioning as the lunar module rotates.

Aldrin: OK, looks like it’s holding.

Mission Control: Roger. We got good data.

Mission Control: Eagle, Houston. It’s Descent Two fuel to monitor. Over.

Mission Control is telling the lunar module which fuel monitoring system to look at.

Armstrong: Going to Two.

Aldrin: Give us an estimated switchover time please, Houston.

Mission Control: Roger. Standby. You’re looking great at eight minutes.

Aldrin is asking Mission Control when the computer will switch from programme P63 to P64, the final approach phase of the lunar landing.

Mission Control: Eagle, you’ve got 30 seconds to P64.

Mission Control: Eagle, Houston. Coming up on 8:30 you’re looking great.

Armstrong: P64.

Mission Control: We copy.

P64 has been initiated.

Mission Control: Eagle, you’re looking great. Coming up nine minutes.

Armstrong: Manual attitude control is good.

Armstrong is testing the manual controls of the lunar module. In video footage from the landing, the module can be seen gently rocking and rotating.

Mission Control: Eagle, Houston. You’re Go for landing. Over.

Aldrin: Roger. Understand. Go for landing. 3,000 feet. Programme alarm. 1201.

Armstrong: 1201.

Mission Control: Roger. 1201 alarm.

Aldrin and Armstrong are facing yet another programme alarm. Mission Control react quickly to reassure them.

Mission Control: We’re Go. Same type. We’re Go.

Aldrin: 2,000 feet. 2,000 feet. Into the AGS, 47 degrees.

Aldrin: 47 degrees.

In the lunar module, Armstrong is asking Aldrin for an LPD (Landing Point Designator). This refers to a scale on the window, marked in degrees, that shows where the computer is aiming for on the lunar surface.

Mission Control: Eagle, looking great. You’re Go.

Mission Control: Roger. 1202, we copy it.

Mission Control is acknowledging yet another computer alarm code.

Aldrin: 35 degrees.

Again, Aldrin is reading out the angle for the Landing Point Designator (LPD). From here on in he will regularly call out both the altitude and speed of descent. Armstrong meanwhile is closely analysing the lunar surface, as the computer appears to be guiding them towards a rocky landing site around a spot called West Crater.

Aldrin: 35 degrees. 750 [feet]. Coming down at 23 [feet per second].

Aldrin: 700 feet, 21 [feet per second] down, 33 degrees.

Aldrin: 600 feet, down at 19 [feet per second].

At this stage Armstrong assumes manual control of the lunar module’s attitude, allowing him to pilot towards a clearer landing site.

Aldrin: 540 feet, down at… [LPD angle] 30. Down at 15 [feet per second].

Aldrin: 400 feet, down at 9 [feet per second]. 58 [feet per second] forward.

Aldrin: 350 feet, down at 4.

Aldrin: 330, 3.5 down.

Aldrin: You’re pegged on horizontal velocity.

Aldrin: 300 feet, down 3.5. 47 forward. Slow it up. 1.5 down.

Aldrin: 270.

Aldrin: I got the shadow out there.

Aldrin is seeing the shadow of the lunar module on the Moon’s surface.

Aldrin: 250, down at 2.5. 19 forward.

Aldrin: Altitude, velocity lights.

Aldrin is reporting warning lights in the lunar module. These are caused because the landing radar has lost its lock on the surface.

Aldrin: 3.5 down. 220 feet. 13 forward.

Aldrin: 11 forward. Coming down nicely. 200 feet. 4.5 down. 5.5 down.

Aldrin: 160 feet. 6.5 down. 5.5 down. 9 forward. You’re looking good. 120 feet.

Aldrin: 100 feet. 3.5 down. 9 forward. 5 per cent. Quantity light.

“5 per cent” relates to the amount of fuel left available for the landing stage. With the fuel at this level, Mission Control has initiated a timer counting down to the moment where the lunar module will either have to land immediately – or abort. This is known as a ‘bingo’ call.

Aldrin: OK, 75 feet and it’s looking good. Down a half. 6 forward.

Mission Control: 60 seconds.

This is the amount of time the Eagle has left before the ‘bingo’ call.

Aldrin: Lights on. 60 feet. Down 2.5. Forward. Forward.

Aldrin: 40 feet, down 2.5. Picking up some dust.

Aldrin: 30 feet, 2.5  down … shadow.

Aldrin: 4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet. Down a half.

Mission Control: 30 seconds.

Aldrin: Drifting forward just a little bit. That’s good.

Aldrin: Contact light.

A sensor hanging from the feet of the Eagle has touched the surface, setting off a light inside the lunar module.

Aldrin: OK engine stop. ACA out of detent.  Mode control: both Auto. Descent Engine Command override: off. Engine arm: off. 413 is in.

All these announcements are related to the Apollo Guidance System, confirming that the lunar module has landed.

 Mission Control: We copy you down, Eagle.

Armstrong: Houston, er… Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

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How long does it take to get to the moon?

Here we explore how long it takes to get to the moon and the factors that affect the journey to our rocky companion.

• Traveling at the speed of light
• Fastest spacecraft
• Driving to the moon

Q&A with an expert

• Calculating travel times

Moon mission travel times

Additional resources, bibliography.

If you wanted to go to the moon, how long would it take? 

Well, the answer depends on a number of factors ranging from the positions of Earth and the moon , to whether you want to land on the surface or just zip past, and especially to the technology used to propel you there.

The average travel time to the moon (providing the moon is your intended destination), using current rocket propulsion is approximately three days. The fastest flight to the moon without stopping was achieved by NASA's New Horizons probe when it passed the moon in just 8 hours 35 minutes while en route to Pluto . 

Currently, the fastest crewed flight to the moon was Apollo 8. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit just 69 hours and 8 minutes after launch according to NASA .

Here we take a look at how long a trip to the moon would take using available technology and explore the travel times of previous missions to our lunar companion. 

Related: Missions to the moon: Past, present and future

How far away is the moon?

To find out how long it takes to get to the moon, we first must know how far away it is. 

The average distance between Earth and the moon is about 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers), according to NASA. But because the moon does not orbit Earth in a perfect circle, its distance from Earth is not constant. At its closest point to Earth — known as perigee — the moon is about 226,000 miles (363,300 km) away and at its farthest — known as apogee — it's about 251,000 miles (405,500 km) away.

How long would it take to travel to the moon at the speed of light?

Light travels at approximately 186,282 miles per second (299,792 km per second). Therefore, a light shining from the moon would take the following amount of time to reach Earth (or vice versa):  

• Closest point: 1.2 seconds 
• Farthest point: 1.4 seconds 
• Average distance:  1.3 seconds 

How long would it take to travel to the moon on the fastest spacecraft so far?

The fastest spacecraft is NASA's Parker Solar Probe , which keeps breaking its own speed records as it moves closer to the sun. On Nov. 21, 2021, the Parker Solar Probe clocked a top speed of 101 miles (163 kilometers) per second during its 10th close flyby of our star, which translates to a blistering 364,621 mph (586,000 kph). According to a NASA statement , when the Parker Solar Probe comes within 4 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface in December 2024, the spacecraft's speed will top 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 km/h)!

So if you were theoretically able to hitch a ride on the Parker Solar Probe and take it on a detour from its sun-focused mission to travel in a straight line from Earth to the moon, traveling at the speeds the probe reaches during its 10th flyby (101 miles per second), the time it would take you to get to the moon would be:

• Closest point: 37.2 minutes
• Farthest point: 41.4 minutes
• Average distance: 39.4 minutes

How long would it take to drive to the moon?

Let's say you decided to drive to the moon (and that it was actually possible). At an average distance of 238,855 miles (384,400 km) and driving at a constant speed of 60 mph (96 km/h), it would take about 166 days.  

We asked Michael Khan, ESA Senior Mission Analyst some frequently asked questions about travel times to the moon. 

Michael Khan is a Senior Mission Analyst for the European Space Agency (ESA). His work involves studying the orbital mechanics for journeys to planetary bodies including Mars.

And what affects the travel time?

The time it takes to get from one celestial body to another depends largely on the energy that one is willing to expend. Here  "energy" refers  to the effort put in by the launch vehicle and the sum of the manoeuvres of the rocket motors aboard the spacecraft, and the amount of propellant that is used. In space travel, everything boils down to energy. Spaceflight is the clever management of energy.

Some common solutions for transfers to the moon are 1) the Hohmann-like transfer and 2) the Free Return Transfer. The Hohmann Transfer is often referred to as the one that requires the lowest energy, but that is true only if you want the transfer to last only a few days and, in addition, if some constraints on the launch apply. Things get very complicated from there on, so I won't go into details.

The transfer duration for the Hohmann-like transfer is around 5 days. There is some variation in this duration because the moon orbit is eccentric, so its distance from the Earth varies quite a bit with time, and with it, the characteristics of the transfer orbit.

The Free Return transfer is a popular transfer for manned spacecraft. It requires more energy than the Hohmann-like transfer, but it is a lot safer, because its design is such that if the rocket engine fails at the moment you are trying to insert into the orbit around the Moon, the gravity of the Moon  will deflect the orbit exactly such that it returns to the Earth. So even with a defective propulsion system, you can still get the people back safely. The Apollo missions flew on Free Return transfers. They take around 3 days to reach the moon.

Why are journey times a lot slower for spacecraft intending to orbit or land on the target body e.g. Mars compared to those that are just going to fly by?

If you want your spacecraft to enter Mars orbit or to land on the surface, you add a lot of constraints to the design problem. For an orbiter, you have to consider the significant amount of propellant required for orbit insertion, while for a lander, you have to design and build a heat shield that can withstand the loads of atmospheric entry. Usually, this will mean that the arrival velocity of Mars cannot exceed a certain boundary. Adding this constraint to the trajectory optimisation problem will limit the range of solutions you obtain to transfers that are Hohmann-like. This usually leads to an increase in transfer duration.

Calculating travel times to the moon — it's not that straightforward

A problem with the previous calculations is that they measure the distance between Earth and the moon in a straight line and assume the two bodies remain at a constant distance; that is, assuming that when a probe is launched from Earth, the moon would remain the same distance away by the time the probe arrives. 

In reality, however, the distance between Earth and the moon is not constant due to the moon's elliptical orbit, so engineers must calculate the ideal orbits for sending a spacecraft from Earth to the moon. Like throwing a dart at a moving target from a moving vehicle, they must calculate where the moon will be when the spacecraft arrives, not where it is when it leaves Earth. 

Another factor engineers need to take into account when calculating travel times to the moon is whether the mission has the intention of landing on the surface or entering lunar orbit. In these cases, traveling there as fast as possible is not feasible as the spacecraft needs to arrive slowly enough to perform orbit insertion maneuvers. 

More than 140 missions have been launched to the moon, each with a different objective, route and travel time. 

Perhaps the most famous — the crewed Apollo 11 mission — took four days, six hours and 45 minutes to reach the moon. Apollo 10 still holds the record for the fastest speed any humans have ever traveled when it clocked a top speed of while the crew of Apollo 10 traveled 24,791 mph (39,897 kph) relative to Earth as they rocketed back to our planet on May 26, 1969.

The first uncrewed flight test of NASA's Orion spacecraft and space launch system rocket — Artemis 1 — reached the moon on flight day six of its journey and swooped down to just 80 miles (130 km) above the lunar surface to gain a gravitational boost to enter a so-called "distant retrograde orbit." 

Read more about how space navigation works with accurate timekeeping with these resources from NASA . Learn more about how before the days of GPS engineers were able to navigate from Earth to the moon with such precision with this article by Gwendolyn Vines Gettliffe published at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 'ask an engineer' feature. 

Hatfield, M. (2021). Space Dust Presents Opportunities, Challenges as Parker Solar Probe Speeds Back toward the Sun – Parker Solar Probe. [online] blogs.nasa.gov. Available at: https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2021/11/10/space-dust-presents-opportunities-challenges-as-parker-solar-probe-speeds-back-toward-the-sun/ .

NASA (2011). Apollo 8. [online] NASA. Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo8.html .

www.rmg.co.uk. (n.d.). How many people have walked on the Moon? [online] Available at: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/how-many-people-have-walked-on-moon . 

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Daisy Dobrijevic joined Space.com in February 2022 having previously worked for our sister publication All About Space magazine as a staff writer. Before joining us, Daisy completed an editorial internship with the BBC Sky at Night Magazine and worked at the National Space Centre in Leicester, U.K., where she enjoyed communicating space science to the public. In 2021, Daisy completed a PhD in plant physiology and also holds a Master's in Environmental Science, she is currently based in Nottingham, U.K. Daisy is passionate about all things space, with a penchant for solar activity and space weather. She has a strong interest in astrotourism and loves nothing more than a good northern lights chase! 

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• UFOareAngels The fact that we are still asking this question proves we never went to the moon and are never going back. Reply
• Rathelor Those Parker Solar Probe travel times seems a little too high. Reply
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In the 1960s our moon was still very much a mystery. To learn the most from the Apollo visits, NASA selected landing sites in a variety of lunar terrains, including the dark, flat plains sculpted by vanished lava oceans and highlands formed by meteor impacts.

From 1969 to 1972, U.S. astronauts landed at six sites, each chosen for different scientific objectives. All of them were on the moon’s mottled near side, where the terrain had been studied extensively by lunar orbiters and Mission Control could remain in direct contact with the astronauts.

Space agencies have sent probes, with no people on them and thus no need to worry about human safety, to visit far-flung places in the solar system. Spacecraft have explored 60 other moons and even set down on one, Saturn’s Titan . On our own moon, robotic rovers have left tracks at four sites.

China made history earlier this year by setting its Chang’e 4 lander on the moon’s far side .

The first private lander to reach the moon crashed in April , but the Israeli nonprofit behind it quickly announced plans to try again.

Not to be outdone , the U.S. intends to send a series of landers with technology to lay the groundwork for astronauts to return.

T MINUS 2: WHAT WE TOOK

Astronauts collected rocks, pebbles, soil, and dust. they also took personal items to space that reflected their interests, beliefs, and passions..

Over four years, NASA astronauts hauled 842 pounds of moon rocks back to Earth. But the most profound souvenirs weigh nothing: images of Earth. Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders snapped an iconic one on Christmas Eve in 1968, showing our blue planet suspended in darkness near the moon’s sterile, cratered horizon.

Astronauts didn’t just take photos and collect moon rocks, they also carried an array of objects from Earth into space with them.

One of NASA’s most requested space photos, this view of Earth, known as Blue Marble, was taken in 1972 from about 18,000 miles away, as Apollo 17 was traveling to the moon.

John Young (Gemini 3) notoriously smuggled aboard a corned beef sandwich and shared it with Gus Grissom, his crewmate. Grissom pocketed it when crumbs began to float around the cabin.

Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) took wine, bread, and a chalice to celebrate Communion. His crewmate Neil Armstrong carried a piece of the Wright Flyer’s wooden propeller. Alan Shepard (Apollo 14) used a sock to hide a six-iron clubhead, which he attached to a tool handle to hit two golf balls on the moon. Charles Duke (Apollo 16) packed a family photo and left it in the Descartes highlands.

After landing on the moon, Buzz Aldrin drank consecrated wine from this three-inch goblet, which is still used by his former church near Houston.

Perhaps the most poignant memento on the lunar surface is a small aluminum human figure, placed there by David Scott during Apollo 15. It rests near a placard bearing the names of 14 fallen astronauts and cosmonauts.

T MINUS 1: IN POP CULTURE

From tv shows to movies, toys, food, and the way we express ourselves, space continues to have a hold on our imagination..

As the space race boomed, it catapulted its aspirations into the zeitgeist—and transformed the way we live.

Sputnik inspired replicas and songs. Life magazine published exclusive stories on the lives of the celebrated Mercury Seven, the United States’ first astronauts. Seattle built the Space Needle for the World’s Fair. Stanley Kubrick created 2001: A Space Odyssey. The space age flourished in movies, TV, music, architecture, and design, where the sleek, aerodynamic lines of rockets inspired the look of cars and trains.

Space is still lodged in popular culture. The NASA logo appears everywhere, from tattoos to Vans high-tops. We’ve had Star Trek, The Jetsons, Mork & Mindy, Star Wars, and the current spate of Mars movies and space-themed TV shows. Also: the Houston Astros and the Houston Rockets, Space Camp, antigravity ballpoint pens, astronaut ice cream, the moonwalk, and Space Mountain.

Billed as “the first space age–inspired car,” the Firebird III, built by General Motors, was powered by a gas turbine engine and sported seven fins. The 1958 concept car had a computer, electronic controls, and a joystick to accelerate, brake, and steer.

Concepts like “the right stuff,” “moon shot,” and “light-years” figure into everyday conversation. Your first day back after vacation might be filled with “reentry” problems. Your craft-brewed IPA might taste like “rocket fuel” or even use those words as its name. And, on discovering a distressing situation, you might calmly say, “Houston, we have a problem.”

LIFTOFF!: WHAT'S NEXT

It may seem as if we've been going nowhere for decades. but a new age of space travel is coming, mixing exploration with a race for profits..

When human beings stepped on the moon 50 years ago this month , it was one of history’s most astounding moments, and not just because our first visit to another world was among humanity’s greatest scientific achievements or because it was the culmination of an epic race between two global superpowers, though both were true. The New York Times put a poem by Archibald MacLeish on the front page, and newscaster Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” would come to say that people living 500 years in the future would regard the lunar landing as “the most important feat of all time.”

The ultimate significance, however, was not that the race had ended or even that a once unimaginable milestone had been attained.

This achievement was really just the beginning.

The beginning of a new era in humanity’s vision of its horizons, of the places we could explore and might even inhabit. Having started as a landfaring species, expanded our reach to the entire planet when we became seafaring, and conquered the atmosphere above Earth when powered flight made us skyfarers, we were now destined to be pilgrims in a vast new realm. We were spacefarers—and soon, as this seminal triumph helped us get over what celebrated scientist and writer Isaac Asimov called our “planetary chauvinism,” we would become an extraplanetary species. “Earthlings” would no longer be sufficient to describe who we were.

All this is what was widely expected, amid the euphoria and wonder on July 20, 1969, when Eagle, Apollo 11’s lunar module, touched down on the moon’s surface. The greatest journey starts with a single step. A small step for one man; a giant leap for all of humankind.

The head of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Thomas O. Paine, was soon aiming for Mars, and not just as a someday goal but with a detailed itinerary laid out in National Geographic. Depart: October 3, 1983. Crew of 12, split between two 250-foot-long spacecraft fired by nuclear rockets. Enter Mars orbit: June 9, 1984. Eighty days of exploration on the Martian surface. Return to Earth orbit: May 25, 1985.

The very act of reaching the moon somehow exalted the human race, yielding confidence that we would indeed push deeper into space. “Wherever we went, people, instead of saying, ‘Well, you Americans did it,’ everywhere they said, ‘We did it!’ ” recalled Michael Collins, the pilot of Apollo 11’s command module. “We humankind, we the human race, we people did it.”

Sunrise is still a few hours away, and as the bus cuts a lonely path through miles of remote steppe in southern Kazakhstan, its headlights occasionally illuminate for the briefest of moments a giant faded mural or a chipped tile mosaic. These stylized works of art show the ravages of baking summers and bitter winters. They adorn huge, rusting, abandoned buildings, and they celebrate the decades-old glories of a space program in a nation that no longer exists: the Soviet Union.

Finally, after miles of this Twilight Zone landscape of Cold War detritus, the bus makes a sudden turn down a gated lane and arrives at a giant, banged-up structure that is definitely not abandoned. Well-armed Russian and Kazakh security officers in camouflage gear seem to have the place surrounded, and it’s bathed in floodlights. Inside this hangar is a gleaming new rocket ship.

I’ve come to the Baikonur Cosmodrome because, just shy of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s the only place on the planet where I can watch a human blast off to space. In turn, the only place in the universe these people can fly to is the International Space Station, some 250 miles above Earth, which is barely one-thousandth of the distance to the moon.

For the past eight years, ever since NASA retired the space shuttle, the only way it has been able to get an American astronaut to the space station has been to hitch a ride with its Russian counterpart, known as Roscosmos, at roughly $82 million for a seat up and back down.

Fifty years on from the moon landing, this is where we are in space, if by “we,” we mean human beings. Which sure sounds like basically nowhere, at least as measured by the yardstick of 1969’s great expectations. Twelve people—all Americans, all men—have stepped on the moon, none since 1972, and other than on Earth-​​orbiting space stations, no human has set foot anywhere else in the universe.

Measured another way, of course, we’re doing extraordinary things in space.

We’ve sent uncrewed probes to explore all the other planets in our solar system, yielding astonishing photographs and troves of data. The twin Voyager spacecraft have literally sped across the solar system and into interstellar space, the first human-made objects ever to do so. They’re more than 11 billion miles away and still communicating with us.

Because the Voyagers could travel forever into the void and both the sun and the Earth have an expiration date (don’t worry, it’s a ways off), it’s conceivable that one day these sedan-size eternal sojourners will be the only evidence that we ever existed. Yet it’s also conceivable that a successor species to us will have long gone interstellar by then, hopefully granting us some recognition for their feat.

And if they do, they may well point to this moment in time—the late 2010s, the early 2020s—as the “inflection shift,” which is how Jim Keravala, a physicist who has overseen satellite launches on Russian, European, and U.S. rockets, characterizes the frenzy of activity in the commercial space industry today.

We are, Keravala says, at the dawn of “the true beginning of the era of space settlement and humanity’s future off-world.” (Keravala now heads OffWorld, a company that intends to deploy millions of robots to turn the inner solar system into a “better, gentler, greener place for life and civilization.”)

Keravala’s intriguing prediction is highly debatable, in part because that old industry chestnut—“space is hard”—happens to be true; setbacks and delays are virtually always part of the march to progress.

But it’s undeniable that something big is going on in space. Two U.S. companies, SpaceX and Boeing, are moving closer to certification of their spaceship models, putting NASA “on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” in the words of NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. These ships—which are to Apollo’s cramped modules as a Boeing 787 Dreamliner is to a prop-driven airliner of the 1950s—may carry out crewed missions by late this year or early next year.

Meanwhile, spacecraft built for two other private companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, have also made major strides, bringing us ever closer to a novel era of space tourism. To begin, they will shoot well-heeled customers up to an elevation of 60-odd miles, to the edge of outer space, where the clientele will experience zero-gravity weightlessness and see the black void of the universe and the blue curvature of the Earth. All this can be yours for a mere $200,000 or so at present—though both companies say prices will drop rapidly and options expand as they bring more rocket ships on line.

Blue Origin is also shaking up the race to put humans back on the moon, announcing in May that it’s building a lander named Blue Moon. The robotic vehicle will be able to haul up to seven tons of cargo and could put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2024.

The action in space is hardly confined to American companies or Russia’s program. In January, China boasted that it “opened a new chapter” in lunar exploration by soft-landing an uncrewed spaceship on the far side of the moon, the first time a vehicle had ever touched down there. That spacecraft deployed a rover bearing a “mini-biosphere,” designed to test whether fruit flies and a variety of plants and seeds can work together to create food in lunar conditions. China announced in April that it intends to build a research station on the moon’s south polar region within the next decade, although the nation’s space agency remains mum about how soon it might try to land “taikonauts,” as its astronauts are known, on the lunar surface.

In Israel, which sees itself as a plucky “start-up nation,” there were both cheers and tears in April, when a nonprofit consortium called SpaceIL made history as the first private concern to orbit the moon. But its bid to make Israel the fourth country to soft-land an object there had a hard ending: SpaceIL’s small spacecraft called Beresheet (Hebrew for Genesis, or “in the beginning”) instead crashed on the lunar surface and lost contact with mission control.

In remote New Zealand, from a launchpad adjacent to a giant sheep pasture, a company called Rocket Lab is sending innovative, low-cost rockets bearing satellites into low Earth orbit.

At the edge of Dubai, where Emirates airline has forged a massive global crossroads for air travelers out of once empty desert, an entirely new and even more colossal airport under construction is being billed as the world’s first “cosmotropolis.” Authorities say it will be capable of handling rocket ships and hyper- and supersonic aircraft as well as conventional jet airliners.

And in Japan, JAXA, the official space agency, announced in March that it was working with Toyota to develop a crewed moon rover that would enable astronauts to travel 6,000 miles on the lunar surface.

Much of today’s rocketry is fueled by an intense competition among a few superbillionaires whose ambitions (and egos) appear to be out of this world.

Their spacecraft are different from yesteryear’s because they are not being developed purely for scientific exploration. These spacecraft are intended to make money by fulfilling the expensive wishes of wannabe astronauts or harvesting valuable resources through mining on asteroids; by flying people quickly between any two points on Earth; and indeed, as Keravala suggests, by ultimately making us a multi-planetary species.

Many of these space titans have a clear vision of where they’re taking the rest of us, but collectively we have barely begun to discuss the ethics—or wisdom—of it all. If, as the relentless evangelist for space and commerce Jeff Bezos has insisted, the solar system can easily support “a trillion humans,” among whom we would have “a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts,” should we then heed the Amazon founder’s call to go forth and multiply in the firmament? (And if so, will Amazon Prime deliver?)

At the same time, there is something very curious about the lofty slogans, visions, and mission statements that private space companies feature in their promotional materials: Many contend that going to space is actually about … saving the Earth—and making it a better place.

“We open space to change the world for good” (Virgin Galactic, founded by billionaire Richard Branson). “To preserve Earth … we must go to space to tap its unlimited resources and energy” (Blue Origin, Bezos’s company). “We open access to space to improve life on Earth” (Rocket Lab). “Imagine most journeys taking less than 30 minutes, with access to anywhere in the world in an hour or less” (SpaceX, brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk, who says space travel will make such Earth-to-Earth trips feasible).

Why are we in space? Fifty years ago, it was easy to answer the question. To reach the moon! Sure, discovery, generally; and national prestige, specifically. To issue a grand proclamation of goodwill: “We came in peace for all mankind.” Everybody knew the point was to step on the moon, return safely, and crow about it.

Ask that question today, however, and you may get any of a dozen answers. These are worth examining, because you can’t explore whether we should be in space without a sense of what we are doing there—or aiming to do.

Much of today’s rocketry is fueled by an intense competition among a few superbillionaires whose ambitions are not purely scientific: Their spacecraft are intended to make money.

Outside the hangar in Kazakhstan, I step off the bus along with the rest of my group—a large crop of reporters, mostly Russians and a few Canadians. We stand around and stomp our feet for a while, as it’s cold on this early December day—seven degrees Fahrenheit with a rattling wind that has a well-below-zero feel to it.

We are at the edge of a security barrier—my group on this side, wielding cameras and notebooks, the security guys on the other side, gripping guns and speaking purposefully into walkie-talkies tucked into the shoulders of their uniforms. The rocket ship is on its side on a flatbed railcar, four conical boosters at the base of a white cylinder, with a brightly painted Russian flag at the top. As it sounds a low whistle, the train slowly pulls out, headed to the launchpad a few miles away.

There’s some drama to the launch because the previous one, in October, was aborted just 57 miles up when a sensor malfunction prompted the crew capsule to separate from the rocket and booster assembly. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin averted disaster with a harrowing emergency landing.

“The crew was lucky,” Anne McClain, an Army lieutenant colonel, Iraq war veteran, and helicopter pilot, explained in a NASA-TV news conference. “But every crew that makes it to orbit is lucky. Spaceflight’s not easy.”

McClain should know: A NASA astronaut, she’s on the launch I’m at the Cosmodrome to see.

Now Roscosmos says the problem is fixed and this Soyuz rocket launch will be trouble free. And indeed, from behind a glass wall in a special quarantine zone, McClain and the other two crew members are telling us—in English, in Russian, and in French—that they share that faith. Thumbs-up all around. A Russian Orthodox priest, as is customary these days, blesses the crew and the ship with holy water in two brief but solemn ceremonies; he even blesses the assembled reporters, a touch I cannot help but appreciate in this era of relentless attacks on the free press.

At Baikonur, reporters witness a launch from a distance of just under a mile, which is significantly closer than at Cape Canaveral, where they are kept about three miles away. It’s a mesmerizing and profound spectacle: the huge burst of orange flame at the rocket’s base on ignition, the engine roar, the rumbling, shaking ground. The awe I feel is intensified by the knowledge that at the very tip of the ship, three of my fellow human beings are trusting that all will be well as they are shot straight up into the sky.

The number of human beings living in space is about to double—from three to six. In less than three weeks the three already at the space station would come home, and the human census beyond Earth’s atmosphere—on the moon, on all the other planets in the solar system, on all those other moons, on asteroids, and in or on the many things that humankind has built and launched into orbit over six decades—would drop back down to three. The other 7.6 billion or so of us? We’re still earthbound.

Thomas O. Paine, NASA’s chief in 1969, thought we’d have set foot on Mars and the moons of Jupiter by now. His prediction still may come true—by the 100th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Soon, however, the United States could have not one but two American-made options for getting astronauts to space, finally severing NASA’s sole dependence on Russian Soyuz rockets. These new spaceships are a first step toward much longer range missions: to the moon, to asteroids, and even to Mars.

And so, a few months after the surprisingly moving, even mystical experience of watching the Soyuz liftoff, I find myself some 170 feet above the ground on a gorgeous blue-sky Florida day, the Atlantic Ocean sparkling a half mile away.

I’m at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, atop Space Launch Complex 41, whose history dates to 1965, when it began launching Titan rockets for the space programs that preceded Apollo. It’s eventually going to launch Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule, which will carry as many as five passengers at a time to the International Space Station.

The first thing I notice after stepping off the elevator are four parallel zip lines leading to the ground at the very edge of the launch complex.

“If you’re an astronaut, you really, really don’t want to be taking that ride,” says Tony Taliancich, director and general manager of launch operations for ULA, a launch alliance that is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Taliancich, imposingly built but perpetually smiling during my tour of his bailiwick, explains that these 1,300-foot-long zip lines are a critical part of the escape system, in case a last-minute explosion, fire, or other emergency provokes an abandon-ship order.

They bring to mind the fire that erupted in the cabin of the Apollo 1 spacecraft in January 1967, a tragedy that quickly claimed the lives of three astronauts at Launch Complex 34 near here, now a memorial site honoring the men “who made the ultimate sacrifice so others could reach the stars.”

They’re also a useful reminder: Despite the strides NASA has made in its perpetual quest to make spaceflight safer, it’s still a dangerous business. Our astronauts are essentially stepping on top of a bomb whenever they climb into the capsule of a spacecraft, a bomb they trust will go off in a controlled manner.

Of the 135 space shuttle flights, two ended in disaster, claiming seven lives each. If we accepted that failure rate in the commercial airliners we rely on in this country, we’d be tolerating more than 500 crashes every day.

Taliancich, who spent much of his career in Air Force space-launch operations, shows me where the Starliner crew capsule will fit and points out the entryway into a sealed chamber that will ensure the cabin remains pristine when the astronauts enter it.

I’d seen a Starliner an hour or so earlier in a nearby assembly plant. More accurately, I’d seen the upper and lower halves of the conical capsule without their outer heat-shielding shells, revealing the mind-boggling spaghetti mix of tubes, wires, and electrical cables that go into a spacecraft.

With improved seats and larger windows, as well as interior LED “mood lighting,” this spacecraft’s cabin is clearly a 21st-century upgrade from an Apollo capsule. While the lighting feature sounds a bit whimsical, it’s anything but. Eventually, advanced lighting may help regulate astronauts’ circadian rhythms and sleep cycles as well as their emotions, one of several critical challenges that must be overcome before NASA or any other space agency can send humans on the months-long trip to Mars.

Just when will that Mars trip finally occur?

NASA does not have a specific timeline for human exploration of the red planet. In the meantime, the focus is on sending astronauts back to the moon as a way to test both human and spacecraft capabilities.

“The moon is the proving ground; Mars is the horizon goal,” NASA’s Bridenstine said in March during a presentation at Cape Canaveral unveiling the space agency’s proposed budget.

To establish a presence on the moon, astronauts will need to look at ways of extracting water, oxygen, and helium—as fuel for human and machine alike. (Helium-3, a gas thought to exist in significant quantities there, could be used for future nuclear fusion–propelled rockets.) The moon could also wind up as a staging ground for launches to elsewhere: Since it has only one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, much less energy is needed to send a ship beyond the moon’s pull than here on our planet.

Space-exploration advocates are unhappy with the budget, saying it provides for a too-slow timetable for getting to Mars. Bridenstine counters that it incentivizes private industry to speed up capabilities for a crewed landing, and he frequently invokes the frenemy of comic character Charlie Brown to make his case that the path to Mars is genuine: “This is not Lucy and the football anymore,” he says. The Starliner—or the SpaceX version, called Crew Dragon, or both—may well be the future of human space exploration.

Still, let’s return to Earth and reiterate a few things about where we are today.

We’re manifestly not where many thought we’d be 50 years on, and certainly not where NASA’s Paine said we could be, which was not only Mars but also the moons of Jupiter and who knows where else. We’re not even back on the moon. Paine, who died in 1992, believed that thousands of us would be enjoying lunar vacations in his lifetime.

“There’s no question we can reduce the cost of travel to the moon to the cost of traveling through air today,” Paine told Time magazine shortly before the Apollo 11 landing.

It’s certainly possible that the big predictions of 1969 will come true—but closer to the 100th anniversary of the lunar landing, with this half-centennial milestone marking the beginning of Space Age 2.0.

Musk, who says he intends to move to Mars someday, is the most aggressive on a time frame. He’s pegged 2024 for a crewed SpaceX spaceship to land on Martian soil, a projection widely dismissed as hopelessly—or recklessly—optimistic. In April a U.S. government–mandated independent analysis concluded that it was “infeasible under all budget scenarios and technology development and testing schedules” for NASA to send humans to Mars before 2034. Other Mars advocates say the early 2040s is more like it.

Landing and exploring: doable. But, to be clear, many experts consider bold projections of celestial living to be, pardon the pun, lunacy.

I ran into Bill Nye, the popular and pithy Science Guy of television fame and CEO of the Planetary Society, at a space conference last year in Washington, D.C., and he rolled his eyes at the idea that Mars will eventually be “terraformed” for human habitation.

“It’s incredibly cold, there’s hardly any water, there’s no food, and by the way, there’s nothing to breathe,” Nye said. “And the smell in your space suit—bring all the Febreze you can pack, because you’re going to be craving it on Mars.” (Nye does favor missions to the red planet, just not permanent habitation.)

The other thing to reiterate: Anything we can do, our robots can do better (in space, that is), with the exception of capturing the majesty of what’s there as only an artist or poet could. We’ve done amazing things in space without sending people there, and not just because we’ve launched all those satellites into orbit that have propelled quantum leaps in how we communicate, navigate, prognosticate—on the weather, anyway—and do countless other things here on Earth.

Probes keep sending back detailed images, and soon we will be launching a telescope into space so powerful that it will enable us to peer at faraway objects whose light originated billions of years ago. This may help us answer questions about the early universe and perhaps even locate life elsewhere in the cosmos.

Those remarkable twin Voyager probes, launched in 1977 and fueled by tiny nuclear-​powered generators, are still returning data about the environment around them, sent by a radio transmitter that uses about as much power as a standard light bulb. That makes for a faint signal, but here on Earth we can “hear” what the Voyagers have to say because we’ve developed antennas sensitive enough to pick up the signal.

“Amazing” strikes me as far too limited a word to describe our most far-flung emissaries, which indeed are diplomats in that they each carry the legendary “Golden Record” of earthly sounds, music from around the world, and greetings from Jimmy Carter (the U.S. president at launch time) to inform and entertain any sentient aliens that might encounter them.

That the Voyagers are still hurtling through the heavens illustrates a serious point.

Humans simply couldn’t make this trip. With our nettlesome need for air and food and water, protection from cosmic radiation or solar flares, not to mention stimulation so we don’t go mad on the long journey to wherever, it’s worth asking: Why go at all? Why go, especially when there is basically nothing to be done that a robotic probe cannot do more efficiently, quickly, cheaply, and safely than a human being? Let’s face the truth: From mining asteroids for rare materials to snapping photos of other planets, uncrewed probes are better suited to the job.

We’re entering a second space age, in which innovations such as reusable rockets are driving down the cost of getting to Mars. The wild card: How much longer will it take to get there?

Yet this raises the question of whether it’s important for us to explore. No un-crewed journey—even one of billions of miles—will ever generate quite the thrill, suspense, or awe of a man putting the first footprint on our nearby moon—or a woman doing so someday on Mars. (The next American to step on the moon, Bridenstine says, will likely be a woman.) If members of the human species are driven to scale Mount Everest or slog to the poles, isn’t there an inevitable urge onward to Mars and beyond? It’s … you know … what we do.

“There’s a fundamental truth to our nature: Man must explore,” Apollo 15 commander David R. Scott radioed in 1971 to ground control in Houston from his spot near Hadley Rille, a valley on the moon. “And this is exploration at its greatest.”

There’s also the matter of what some futurists call an “insurance policy” for the survival of the species and others call our Plan B in case Earth itself were to become uninhabitable. That could happen through a force beyond our control, like the asteroid that seems to have annihilated the dinosaurs, or by our own folly, through nuclear war or drastic derangement of our climate.

We’ve been worried about Plan A, and that’s a good thing, because it’s by far the best plan we have, and it may be the only one. As the environmental activist and author Bill McKibben puts it, the least hospitable patch of Earth is still far more hospitable to human life than any reachable spot we have found anywhere else.

The central irony of the first space age was that the most iconic images it yielded were not those of the moon or the other planets, but the ones of our own planet. “Earthrise,” our serene-looking blue orb swaddled in swirling clouds over the moon’s horizon, is the most famous. These photographs galvanized the environmental movement, spurred new laws to clean our water and air, and prompted a lot of people to ask a simple question: “Shouldn’t we be spending all that money to fix our own problems first?”

The “all that money” part referred to the space program, which in some years consumed 4.5 percent of the federal budget. (Today NASA’s budget is half of one percent.) Getting men and women to Mars before now could easily have cost at least that much, so there’s a pretty good case to be made that we’ve been right to take a pass so far.

We’re now entering that second space age, in which relentless innovations such as reusable rockets are driving down the cost of getting there. It will surely prove much less expensive to get to Mars in another decade or three than it would be today, and certainly less than it would have been in the 1980s. That’s a good bargain, even if those of us who watched Neil Armstrong kick up a little moondust never dreamed that it would take that long.

How much longer remains the wild card.

A serious accident or tragedy in any space venture tends to set back all of them, sometimes by years. Funding is hardly bottomless: For the moment, for instance, plans for asteroid mining seem to have stalled a bit. It may or may not be true that (as the industry’s cheerleaders contend) there’s a trillion dollars or more to be harvested from rare minerals out in space, but what if it takes $100 billion or $200 billion to develop the technology to try to find out? That’s a lot of money to wager that your unicorn will come in.

Finally, space has a dark side, and not just the vast empty blackness that astronauts who have been through it describe. With the United States, China, and Russia all developing space weaponry (for defensive purposes, all three insist), we could find ourselves fighting a future war in space, launching missiles, destroying satellites, and training powerful laser weapons on earthbound targets, including people.

To excavate, haul, and dump the layer of dust and rocks found on the surface of the moon, NASA designed a mobile robotic platform called RASSOR, shown here at the Kennedy Space Center. To operate in a low-gravity environment, it has counter-rotating bucket drums that are not dependent on traction or weight.

On my way to the Soyuz rocket launch in Kazakhstan, I stopped first in Moscow to meet with a few cosmonauts and visit some museums, because it’s hard to appreciate how NASA’s astronauts got to the moon without understanding the challenge posed by the Soviet space program that spurred them there.

Americans tend to view the push to the lunar landing as they would, say, a football game. Nobody really remembers or cares who was ahead during most of the contest; the important thing is who won, even if they had to come from three touchdowns behind to do it. By that score, the U.S. triumphed. End of story.

But in Russia, where Soviet-era cosmonauts are national icons, you come away with a Bizarro World view of a completely different space race.

In the Russian telling, the whole thing was more of a track meet, and they killed on points, even if the Americans bagged a prestige event at the end.

The list of Soviet firsts in space is indeed impressive, from the first satellite, dogs, man, and woman in space to the first multiperson crew and space walk. It’s enough to make any American appreciate the magnitude of our national humiliation in space at the hands of our Communist adversaries at the height of the Cold War and why President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to land astronauts on the moon and return them to Earth by the end of the 1960s was such a brilliant gambit to recoup prestige on the global stage.

Interestingly, the cosmonauts I met in Russia seemed to share two perspectives with their American counterparts. First, their time in space made them profoundly more interested in protecting the Earth. (Indeed, two cosmonauts gave me books they had written—not on space, but on protecting our environment.) Second, even while strongly favoring human space exploration, they think the idea of permanent, widespread human colonization of space is bonkers.

“It’s not … pleasant, actually,” Viktor Savinykh said after a long pause when I asked him about living in space.

Savinykh, 79, is famous in Russia for his role in the daring repair of a crippled, ice-encrusted, and dangerously out-of-orbit Salyut space station in 1985. “You get disoriented so easily, you can’t remember things up there,” he continued. “It’s really hard on the brain. All that sun in your eyes. It’s hard to describe. Your body weakens.”

Still, he acknowledged that Bezos’s vision could come to pass someday.

“I don’t have the answers to this,” Savinykh told me. “The new generation and then the next and then the next—they will get to decide. We did our part.”

Those generations are certainly going to ask intriguing questions. Toward the end of the space conference I’d attended in Washington, a panel of U.S. astronauts fielded videotaped queries sent in by schoolkids from around the world.

“Is it possible,” a five-year-old boy from Baltimore named Braith Ortenzi wanted to know, “to get from galaxy to galaxy?”

“I’m glad he’s thinking big!” replied Chris Ferguson, a veteran of three space shuttle missions who’s slated to be on the first Boeing Starliner trip to the space station. “We’re going to have to master this whole light-speed thing,” he added as the audience broke into laughter, “before we get galaxy to galaxy.”

“He’ll develop the technology to do it!” interjected Victor Glover, an astronaut slated for the first SpaceX Crew Dragon flight.

“Please take us,” said Nicole Stott, a retired astronaut and veteran of two trips to the space station. “Take us with you!”

Glover, nodding with a huge grin, had the final word: “It’s on you, brother!”

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What Was the Apollo 11 Spacecraft Like? Climb Inside in 3D

T here wasn’t much glamour in an Apollo command module. The ship was little more than an 11-ft (3.3 m) tall conical capsule that served as home to a trio of astronauts for most of their trip to and from the moon. It had a habitable volume of just 210 cubic ft. (5.9 cu. m), which is like packing three grown men in a minivan for history’s longest road trip .

But it was a magnificent ship too—none more so than the Apollo that got the numeral 11. That, of course, is the one that carried Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin out to the moon for history’s first lunar landing, 50 years ago this month. The spacecraft has spent most of the years since on display, encased in a protective plastic shell at the Smithsonian Institution’s national Air and Space Museum, affording a look inside through its windows and open hatch, but providing no real sense of what it was like to be inside. Now that’s being remedied, thanks to a 3D experience you can try here , created by the Smithsonian and its collaborator Autodesk, a company that specializes in cloud-based 3D design.

Removing Apollo 11’s plastic hatch cover for one of the few times since the spacecraft went on display, technicians used 3D visual scanners mounted on booms to capture every cubic inch of the cramped space in which the astronauts once lived. The work involved taking one trillion 3D measurements which produced over a terabyte of data. It is designed to be viewed both in flat screen pan-and-scan and on Google Cardboard, for Android or iPhone.

The detail captured by this painstaking work is both extraordinary and immersive. There is the sweeping array of switches, indicator, breakers and knobs that fill the wraparound instrument panel—with their names and functions readily readable. There is the lower equipment bay beneath the seats, where the navigational sextant and computer were located. There are the astronauts’ cloth and canvas couches and the five windows through which they first glimpsed the moon and the closed tunnel in the nose of the spacecraft that once connected to the lunar lander.

And, as with so many places humans go and things they touch, there is graffiti: a calendar indicating every day the mission flew—July 16 through July 24, 1969. There are random numbers scribbled on the bulkhead, as one or the other of the astronauts, without a flight plan or scrap of paper handy, jotted down some coordinates Houston read up to them.

And there is, most evocatively, a tribute written by Collins, the command module pilot—or CMP—who stayed aboard Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin flew off in the lunar module Eagle to land in the Sea of Tranquility. The two moonwalkers were destined to become history’s headliners on this particular mission, while Collins would always be thought of as something of a supporting player. Still he flew this ship well and he flew it with care and he left behind some words that show that.

“Spacecraft 107, alias ‘Apollo 11’ alias ‘Columbia,” he wrote on a panel in the equipment bay. “The best ship to come down the line. God bless her. Michael Collins CMP.”

Almost no one on the planet had seen those words since the day in 1969 when Collins wrote them. Now we all can.

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Future of Space Exploration

Everything you wanted to know about upcoming missions to learn about the cosmos.

Before Going to the Moon, Apollo 11 Astronauts Trained at These Five Sites

From Arizona to Hawaii, these landscapes—similar in ways to the surface of the moon—were critical training grounds for the crew

Jennifer Nalewicki

Travel Correspondent

Before Neil Armstrong could take his “small step for a man” on July 20, 1969, he and the rest of the Apollo 11 crew underwent a rigorous regimen of training to prepare for their mission to the moon . While much of their instruction took place inside the classroom and at testing facilities, NASA also charged the astronauts with tasks like collecting geological specimens and entering and exiting the lunar module to help build muscle memory to replicate these activities on the moon. To make their training as realistic as possible, the crew trained at sites right here on Earth that looked eerily similar to the topography of the moon.

“[NASA] was looking for places that would roughly approximate the geological features of the moon,” says Stephen Garber, a policy analyst in the NASA History Program Office, “but since we hadn’t been there before, it was something of a guessing game.”

During their training, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins underwent frequent field trips both nationally and internationally, although the bulk of their fieldwork was based in the American Southwest at locations in Arizona, Texas and Nevada.

“The reason they trained at so many sites was to get an appreciation for the different aspects of various geological features [they would come in contact with during their mission]” Garber says. “They also had a combination of classroom training and field training, although the field training was really emphasized a fair amount because [NASA] wanted to ingrain the procedures in the astronauts’ muscle memory, so they wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about how to take a sample or how to take a photo. Scientists back on Earth could analyze the samples and photos later on; the astronauts had enough to do and the point was to get them home safely.”

Using their hands and small shovels, the astronauts repeatedly practiced collecting and analyzing rock and soil samples at different sites so that the process would become ingrained in them once they arrived on the moon. Other equally important simulations they conducted involved selecting site locations, digging trenches and collecting samples at different levels, driving core tubes into the soil for sample collection, describing geological characteristics both verbally and in written format, documenting sites using photography, and adequately labeling the samples they collected.

Seeing the benefits of training at lunar analogues , which are defined as areas on Earth that are used to simulate the topography and geology of the moon, NASA made analog missions a common training tool for astronauts preparing for future space travel, including for subsequent Apollo missions.

Now, with the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 quickly approaching, these training sites serve as a physical reminder of one of humankind’s greatest accomplishments. Here are five locations in the United States that you can visit:

Cinder Lake Crater Field, Arizona

Between July and October of 1967, NASA was on a mission to turn a 500-foot-by-500-foot site just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, into a mirror image of a portion of the moon’s surface. Armed with tons of TNT and ammonium nitrate, NASA worked with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to blast craters into this swath of land chosen for its many layers of volcanic cinders, which approximated the look and feel of the moon’s surface . Workers used satellite imagery as their guide to duplicate the topography on a 1:1 scale. Over the course of the next 120 days, workers created 47 craters with diameters measuring between 5 feet and 43 feet, approximating Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), Apollo 11’s planned lunar landing site.

During their field training, the crew visited this manmade crater field inside the lunar module and were tested on their ability to name their location by only looking out of the LM’s windows at the topography around them and pinpointing it on satellite images. Over the years, NASA and the USGS would create additional crater fields to train astronauts for future Apollo missions. Although the craters aren’t as pronounced as they were 50 years ago due to weathering and human use (they're particularly popular with off-roaders and ATVs), they’re still visible and accessible to the public.

Grand Canyon, Arizona

While all three Apollo astronauts were well versed in operating the Command Module Columbia, the spacecraft that would rocket them into space, and the LM that would shuttle them safely to the moon, they needed to brush up on their geology skills. Since one of the main focuses of their mission was to collect lunar samples, the crew worked closely with geologists here on Earth on how to gather and study rock samples. One place in particular where they did field training was in the Grand Canyon. For two days in early March 1964, the crew learned basic geological principles such as how to identify and collect various types of rocks. The group hiked the South Kaibab Trail to the bottom of the canyon and then had to identify their location using topographic maps and satellite images, before ascending on the Bright Angel Trail the following day. Both trails remain popular day hikes and give visitors the chance to trace the astronauts’ footsteps.

Astronauts in training noted that their time spent in the Grand Canyon were some of the most beneficial in their training as a whole, with one unnamed astronaut saying to the geologists that, "we've listened to you for two weeks [in a classroom setting] and not understood. And one field trip has shown us the importance and the reasons for all of the discussion."

Sierra Blanca, Texas

Located about 90 miles southeast of El Paso, Sierra Blanca , near the Quitman Mountains, is peppered with volcanic rocks, making it a good location for Apollo 11 mission training. On February 24, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin, the two astronauts assigned with completing the moonwalk, joined a team of geologists in an exercise that tasked them with properly identifying and describing rock samples using tape recorders and VOX microphones and capturing their work on camera, actions they would have to replicate on the moon. Although the exercise may sound straightforward, the astronauts had to accurately identify a multitude of samples from various sites in the area and correctly name each one. While visually many of the rocks appeared similar, upon cracking them open they were different, adding a layer of difficulty to the task.

Nevada National Security Site, Nevada

Of all the test sites that the astronauts visited, in recordings from their mission to the moon, the crew cited the Nevada National Security Site (also known as the Nevada Test Site) as the most beneficial to their training. In fact, the site located just east of Death Valley National Park would become a recurring spot for future Apollo astronauts to train, as it was considered by geologists to be “an ideal training site.”

During a three-day field trip in February 1965, the Apollo 11 crew carried out numerous geological and geophysical studies at Sedan and Schooner craters and Buckboard Mesa, fine-tuning their ability to collect samples. They also explored ancient volcanic formations that closely resembled the surface of the moon, including the Timber Mountain caldera. Today, the NNSS offers monthly tours of the area (unfortunately, access to the caldera is restricted), and reservations are required.

Various Locations, Hawaii

While most of the astronauts’ fieldwork was done at sites over the course of a day or two, the Apollo 11 crew spent an extensive amount of time in January 1965 training on the ground in Hawaii thanks to its abundance of volcanoes. It was during these excursions both on foot and via airplane that the astronauts got a chance to study the different physical aspects of volcanoes, including gas and lava vents, lava lakes, pit craters and more. During the final days of their stay, they hiked to the top of the 13,677-foot Mauna Loa , known as the world’s largest volcano, to observe its summit crater. Four years later they would revisit Hawaii again upon completion of their lunar mission, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean via the Command Module Columbia. To trace their footsteps, there are two ways to ascend to the top of Mauna Loa. One involves obtaining a permit , but the other is a more gradual roundtrip hike of 13 miles.

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Jennifer Nalewicki | | READ MORE

Jennifer Nalewicki is a Brooklyn-based journalist. Her articles have been published in The New York Times , Scientific American , Popular Mechanics , United Hemispheres and more. You can find more of her work at her website .

• 10 Amazing Facts About The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

“That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” Those were the famous remarks made by astronaut Neil Armstrong as he made the first human footprints on the Moon. The Apollo 11 was the government mission that aimed to have a manned lunar landing which featured the spacecraft "Eagle" launched from the "Saturn V" rocket. The Moon landing was arguably one of the most critical landmarks of human civilization and its significance still resonates today. While the event remains to be hugely popular both in the scientific world as well as in pop culture, several fun facts about the mission still remain relatively unknown.

10. Armstrong carried with him a piece of wood from an airplane that belonged to the Wright brothers.

The first recorded flight was achieved by the Wright Brothers in 1903, 66 years before the first manned lunar mission. Thus, Neil Armstrong saw it fit to take with him pieces of wood from the pioneering Wright plane as well as a piece of fabric from the plane to symbolize the great progress made in aviation. Armstrong held these in his "personal preference kit" (PPK). The Wright Brothers, like Neil, were from the state of Ohio. The artefacts now sit in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

9. If Apollo 11 had failed, President Nixon had a speech ready.

Although the Apollo 11 now has a cemented place in world history, at the time of its launch its success was not so certain. The mission had such a large risk of failing, in fact, that President Richard Nixon had a speech at the ready in case of catastrophe. As nobody had ever once landed on the Moon, it was not known whether or not it was even possible to takeoff from the Moon in order to return back to Earth. Thankfully, there was never occasion for the use of the speech, although copies of the text have since surfaced.

8. Armstrong and Aldrin spent almost a full day on the Moon's surface.

The period spent outside the probe while on the Moon is known as "extravehicular activity", or EVA, a term that covers any astronaut activity performed beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Due to the many experiments the astronauts conducted on the Moon as well as placement of the many instruments involved, the total EVA lasted 21 hours and 36 minutes. However, only a few hours of time was spent on the lunar surface itself, as the astronauts took breaks in the probe as well.

7. After returning to earth, the astronauts had to be placed into quarantine.

After landing on Earth, the three astronauts were promptly taken to a quarantine facility where they remained for 21 days. The reason behind this strange action was to prevent contamination of any micro-organisms carried by the crew from the Moon, as the astronauts were returning from very uncharted territory. Nobody in the space program was sure whether or not the lunar surface was sterile. Of course, later studies confirmed the Moon to be void of any forms of life.

6. The astronauts left pictures of human beings and the recordings of many languages on the Moon's surface.

The astronauts left several items on the surface of the Moon, including pictures of human beings as well as audio recordings of several different languages to represent the global significance of the mission. Medallions bearing names of the three astronauts who perished in Apollo 1 on the launch pad and the two cosmonauts who perished in a similar accident were all left on the surface of the Moon as well.

5. The astronauts declared

In 2015, Buzz Aldrin tweeted a "travel voucher" that outlined the nature of expenses incurred from his trip out of the atmosphere, just like somebody would for a trip of a more Earthly nature. In addition, he revealed that the astronauts were required to sign customs forms upon their return to Earth, upon which they declared to be carrying "moon rock and moon dust samples".

4. The astronauts landed with only 25 seconds of fuel to spare.

In vein with the intricate planning of the Apollo 11 mission, a site on the Moon was picked as the landing site that was thought to be a clear choice. However, while the Apollo probe was descending, the two astronauts realized the site was filled with boulders and knew it would be hazardous to attempt their descent. Therefore, Armstrong began to manually navigate the probe which involved skimming over the risky site, a decision which meant more fuel would be consumed while skimming over the location. The probe had a fuel limit set where upon reaching it, automatic abort of the landing would begin. The probe landed 25 seconds before reaching this point. What this means is that if the probe were 25 seconds late on its landing, automatic abortion of the mission would have occurred, forcing them to travel back to the Columbia that was orbiting the Moon.

3. The exact phrase uttered by Armstrong has been disputed.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" is a phrase familiar to many, but did you know that its accuracy has been disputed by Armstrong himself? The exact quote, Armstrong claimed, is actually "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Although many claimed to not hear this subtle variation, linguists have confirmed that Armstong does in fact utter "a", leading to the quote to most officially be presented with the article in brackets.

2. The landing was watched on television by an estimated 600 million people.

The record-breaking event was seen by millions of viewers around the planet. In the days preceding the mission, media outlets all over spoke extensively of the mission, leading to widespread public anticipation. There was a great amount media coverage of the event in the United States, and it is estimated that over 53 million families watched the mission on television. Global viewership was estimated to be more than 550 million viewers, a world record at the time.

1. Although there were three astronauts sent to the Moon, only two of them actually stepped on it.

Many people who have knowledge of the Apollo mission believe that the probe carried only two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Armstrong being more famous of the two. While it is true that the module that landed on the Moon carried the two astronauts, they were three in total when they left the Kennedy Space Center, Florida on July 16th, 1969. When the Apollo spacecraft approached the Moon, one module was left orbiting around the Moon and was piloted by the third astronaut named Michael Collins. Although Collins did not experience the glory of stepping on the Moon's surface firsthand, the mission would not have been possible without him.

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