Curated playlist
Spacecraft that soft-landed on the Moon
- Lunar Module EagleLunar Module Eagle landed on the Moon with only 216 pounds of usable fuel left.
- Apollo 11Apollo 11's computer flashed alarms minutes before the Moon landing. Mission Control was told it was safe to continue.
- Apollo 12Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice in its first minute. Every warning light lit up.
- Apollo 15Apollo 15 astronauts dropped a hammer and a falcon feather on the Moon. Both hit the ground together.
- Apollo 17Apollo 17's orange moon soil thrilled scientists who thought it was a volcano.
- Apollo 14Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the Moon. He had smuggled a six iron club head aboard.
- Apollo 16Apollo 16 went to the Moon to find volcanic rock and found none. Scientists had been sure the highlands were volcanic.
- Chang'e 6Chang'e 6 became the first mission to bring home a piece of the Moon's far side.
- Luna 9Luna 9's first Moon photos were decoded in England, not Moscow.
- Surveyor 1Surveyor 1, an uncrewed NASA lunar lander, went into its mission against long odds. Justin Rennilson, formerly of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, put it plainly: "We figured the probability of success at around 10 to 15 percent." How does a…
- Surveyor 3Surveyor 3 is the only spacecraft that humans have ever visited on another world. In November 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean walked up to this American uncrewed lander on the Moon and carried pieces of it back to…
- Chang'e 4Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the Moon's far side, where radio cannot reach Earth.
- Chandrayaan-3India's Chandrayaan-2 lander crashed near the Moon's south pole in 2019. Four years later, Chandrayaan-3 landed there.