NASA's Moon landing programme — 17 missions, 12 astronauts on the lunar surface, and the single greatest feat of exploration in human history. Every mission, every crew, every milestone.
Last updated: · · Sources: NASA History Office
The Apollo programme was NASA's third human spaceflight programme and the one that achieved President Kennedy's 1961 goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the decade. Between 1968 and 1972, nine Apollo missions flew to the Moon, six of which landed successfully.
The programme employed the Saturn V — still the most powerful rocket ever flown operationally — the Command/Service Module (CSM) for transit and orbit, and the Lunar Module (LM) for descent and ascent. At its peak, Apollo employed over 400,000 people and consumed roughly 4% of the US federal budget.
Apollo's legacy extends far beyond the Moon landings themselves. The programme drove advances in computing, telecommunications, materials science, and project management that shaped technology for decades. The lunar samples returned by Apollo missions — 382 kg in total — continue to yield new scientific insights more than 50 years later.
| Mission | Date | Crew | Duration | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo 1 | 27 Jan 1967 | Grissom, White, Chaffee | — | Launch pad fire — 3 crew lost |
| Apollo 7 | 11 Oct 1968 | Schirra, Eisele, Cunningham | 10d 20h | First crewed Apollo flight, CSM test in LEO |
| Apollo 8 | 21 Dec 1968 | Borman, Lovell, Anders | 6d 3h | First crewed flight to the Moon, 10 lunar orbits |
| Apollo 9 | 3 Mar 1969 | McDivitt, Scott, Schweickart | 10d 1h | First crewed Lunar Module flight (LEO test) |
| Apollo 10 | 18 May 1969 | Stafford, Young, Cernan | 8d 0h | Lunar Module descended to 15.6 km above the Moon |
| Apollo 11 | 16 Jul 1969 | Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins | 8d 3h | First Moon landing — Sea of Tranquillity, 21 Jul 1969 |
| Apollo 12 | 14 Nov 1969 | Conrad, Gordon, Bean | 10d 4h | Precision landing near Surveyor 3, Ocean of Storms |
| Apollo 13 | 11 Apr 1970 | Lovell, Swigert, Haise | 5d 22h | Aborted after oxygen tank explosion — crew returned safely |
| Apollo 14 | 31 Jan 1971 | Shepard, Roosa, Mitchell | 9d 0h | Fra Mauro highlands, longest distance walked on the Moon |
| Apollo 15 | 26 Jul 1971 | Scott, Worden, Irwin | 12d 7h | First Lunar Roving Vehicle, Hadley Rille |
| Apollo 16 | 16 Apr 1972 | Young, Mattingly, Duke | 11d 1h | Descartes highlands, 95 kg of samples collected |
| Apollo 17 | 7 Dec 1972 | Cernan, Evans, Schmitt | 12d 13h | Last Moon landing, Taurus-Littrow valley, 110 kg samples |
Total crew members: 29 astronauts flew on Apollo missions (24 went to the Moon, 12 walked on the surface). Three astronauts — Lovell, Young, and Cernan — flew to the Moon twice.
Lunar samples returned: 382 kg (842 lb) of Moon rocks, core samples, and regolith collected across six landing missions. These remain the primary source of lunar geological data.
Saturn V specifications: 110.6 m tall, 2,800 tonnes at launch, 140 tonnes to LEO, 48.6 tonnes to trans-lunar injection. 13 Saturn V rockets were launched, all successfully reaching orbit.
Total programme cost: Approximately $25.8 billion (1973 dollars), equivalent to roughly $257 billion in 2025 dollars. This represented about 4% of the US federal budget at its peak in the mid-1960s.
Last human on the Moon: Gene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface on 14 December 1972 during Apollo 17. As of 2026, no human has returned — a gap that NASA's Artemis programme aims to close.