Apollo Moon

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There were several Apollo moon landings. The most famous is Apollo 11 which placed the first man on the Moon. There were a total of 6 successful moon landings during the Apollo space program. There were 7 scheduled, but an accident onboard Apollo 13 caused the landing to be aborted and the astronauts returned to Earth early. You will find a short paragraph with some of the highlights of each mission and links to more indepth articles in this article.

Apollo 11 was the first moon landing in the history of man. The Russians tried to steal the thunder by rushing a mission to the Moon, but its landing was aborted for technical issues. The mission was launched on July 16, 1969 and landed on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the surface of the Moon.

The Apollo 12 mission was nearly aborted after lightning struck the craft on the launch pad. Fuel cells and telemetry were temporarily lost. The lunar lander came to rest within 200 m of the Surveyor 3 probe.

Apollo 13 had to be cut short and skipped its lunar landing after early shutdown of inboard S-II engine and an unrelated oxygen tank rupture in service module. The crew took temporary refuge in the lunar module in order to survive and returned safely to Earth after a single pass around the Moon.

Apollo 14 had several problems once it took off. There were docking problems, abort switch contamination, and delayed landing radar acquisition. These all threatened the missions ability to land. The mission did capture the first color video images from the Moon, performed the first materials science experiments in space, and completed two EVAs.

Apollo 15 was the first mission to stay on the Moon for three days. It was the first to use the lunar rover(traveled a total of 27.76 km). The astronauts performed more extensive geology investigations and completed 1 lunar “standup” EVA, 3 lunar surface EVAs, plus a deep space EVA.

Apollo 16 had a couple of malfunctions: one in a backup yaw gimbal servo loop(almost aborted landing and reduced time in lunar orbit by one day for safety reasons) and the other malfunction prevented controlled ascent stage impact after jettison. This was the only mission to target lunar highlands. The astronauts completed 3 lunar EVAs and a deep space EVA.

Apollo 17 was the last manned landing on the Moon. It was the only mission with a scientist (geologist) on board. This mission is also the last manned flight beyond low Earth orbit. The astronauts completed 3 lunar EVAs and a deep space EVA.

Here are the links to more indepth articles about each of these missions:

Apollo 11
Apollo 12
Apollo 13
Apollo 14
Apollo 15
Apollo 16
Apollo 17

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