Curated category
Spacecraft that soft-landed on the Moon
- Lunar Module EagleLunar Module Eagle, designated LM-5, arrived at the surface of the Moon with only 216 pounds of usable fuel left in its tanks.
- Apollo 11Apollo 11, launched on the 16th of July 1969, carried three astronauts toward a destination no human being had ever reached.
- Apollo 12Apollo 12 launched into a sky that had no business sending anyone to the Moon. On the 14th of November 1969, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, rain fell…
- Apollo 15Apollo 15 launched on the 26th of July 1971, and from the moment it left the ground, it was a different kind of Moon mission.
- Apollo 17Apollo 17 launched at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on the 7th of December 1972, blazing into the night sky above Florida.
- Apollo 14Apollo 14 launched on the 31st of January 1971, carrying three astronauts on a mission that no one in the program could afford to lose.
- Apollo 16Apollo 16 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the 16th of April, 1972, carrying three men toward a highland plain that scientists were certain…
- Chang'e 6Chang'e 6 left a hole in the lunar soil shaped like a single Chinese character. Engineers recognized it as 中, zhong, the first character in Zhongguo, China's…
- Luna 9Luna 9 became the first spacecraft in history to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, touching down on the 3rd of February 1966 in a volcanic plain called…
- Chang'e 4Chang'e 4 touched down on the far side of the Moon at 02:26 UTC on the 3rd of January 2019, becoming the first spacecraft in history to land there.
- Chandrayaan-3Chandrayaan-3's landing on the 23rd of August 2023 drew eight million concurrent viewers to a single YouTube livestream.