Apollo Missions

The Apollo missions were a series of crewed spaceflights run by the United States space agency, NASA, between 1961 and 1972. Their goal was set in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy: to land a person on the Moon and return them safely to Earth before the end of the decade. On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11 did exactly that. Across 11 crewed missions, 12 American astronauts walked on the Moon. Apollo remains the only programme in human history to put people on another world.

  • Total crewed missions11Apollo 7 to Apollo 17
  • Moon landings6Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17
  • People who walked on the Moon12All American men, all between 1969 and 1972
  • First Moon landing20 July 1969Apollo 11, with Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins
  • Last Moon landing11 December 1972Apollo 17, with Cernan, Schmitt and Evans
  • RocketSaturn V111 m tall, the most powerful rocket ever flown

Why we went to the Moon

Apollo was born from the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Soviets launched the first satellite (Sputnik) in 1957 and the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin) in 1961, the US was clearly losing the space race. President John F. Kennedy announced an audacious goal on 25 May 1961: "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 the Earth."

At the time, the US had only put one astronaut into a 15-minute up-and-down hop above the atmosphere. Going to the Moon required completely new rockets, spacecraft, computers and procedures. NASA built it all in 8 years.

Apollo 11: One small step

Apollo 11 launched on 16 July 1969 from Cape Kennedy in Florida, carrying three astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Four days later, after a quarter-million-mile journey, Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the Moon's surface in the lunar lander Eagle, while Collins stayed in orbit in the command module Columbia.

Armstrong landed with only 25 seconds of fuel left, having flown manually past a boulder field to find a safe spot. As he stepped off the ladder onto the lunar dust, he said the famous words: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin followed shortly after and called the view "magnificent desolation". The two spent about 2 hours and 30 minutes outside, collected 22 kg of Moon rock, and planted an American flag before climbing back into the lander and returning safely to Earth.

The other Moon landings

Five more Apollo missions landed on the Moon after Apollo 11.

  • Apollo 12 (Nov 1969): a precision landing 200 m from a robotic probe (Surveyor 3) that had landed years before.
  • Apollo 14 (Feb 1971): Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the Moon.
  • Apollo 15 (Jul 1971): the first mission with a Lunar Rover, allowing the astronauts to drive several kilometres from the lander.
  • Apollo 16 (Apr 1972): explored the lunar highlands, the rougher and older terrain of the Moon.
  • Apollo 17 (Dec 1972): the only mission to include a geologist (Harrison Schmitt). The longest stay on the Moon at 3 days.

Apollo 13: the successful failure

Apollo 13 was meant to be the third Moon landing. Two days into the flight to the Moon, on 13 April 1970, an oxygen tank in the service module exploded. The damage knocked out almost all the spacecraft's power and oxygen. The famous radio message from astronaut Jack Swigert was "Houston, we've had a problem".

The three astronauts (Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise) had to abandon their landing and crowd into the small lunar lander, which became their lifeboat. With brilliant work by ground controllers in Houston, they used the lander's engines to swing around the Moon and back home. They splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean after a six-day ordeal. Apollo 13 became known as a "successful failure": no landing, but everyone got home alive against terrible odds.

Fact The Apollo 11 mission computer, called the Apollo Guidance Computer, had only 64 KB of memory and ran at 0.043 MHz. That is around a million times less powerful than a modern smartphone. Yet it successfully navigated three astronauts a quarter of a million miles, landed them on the Moon, and brought them back. Modern computers run our games and TikTok feeds; that one took humans to another world.

What was left on the Moon

The six successful Apollo landings left behind a remarkable set of objects on the lunar surface. Each mission left its lower lander stage, its scientific instruments, and various items the crew did not need to carry back. Famous "left behind" items include:

  • Six American flags (although the radiation has probably bleached them all white by now).
  • Three Lunar Roving Vehicles, used by Apollos 15, 16 and 17.
  • A plaque on each lander that reads, in part, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon".
  • A small silicon disc with messages from the leaders of 73 countries.
  • An olive branch left by Apollo 11 as a symbol of peace.
  • The remains of three monkeys and a memorial plaque to all astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the pursuit of space flight.
  • The astronauts' boots, tools and even bags of human waste (yes, really).
  • Laser reflectors that scientists on Earth still bounce lasers off to measure the Earth-Moon distance to within a few millimetres.
Did you know? No human has been back to the Moon since 1972. NASA's Artemis programme aims to change that by returning astronauts (including the first woman) to the lunar surface, possibly later this decade. Several other countries (China, India, Japan) are also planning their own Moon missions, both robotic and eventually crewed.
Deeper dive: how did the Saturn V actually work?

The Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon is still the most powerful rocket ever flown. At 111 metres tall (slightly taller than St Paul's Cathedral), it weighed almost 3,000 tonnes fully fuelled, of which over 90% was rocket fuel. At lift-off it produced 7.6 million pounds of thrust, the equivalent of about 160 Boeing 747s at full power. People standing miles away could feel the ground shake as it climbed.

The Saturn V had three stages, each of which dropped off as its fuel ran out. The first stage burned kerosene and liquid oxygen for 2 minutes and 41 seconds, lifting the rocket about 67 km. The second stage burned liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for 6 minutes more, reaching nearly orbital speed. The third stage finished the job and put Apollo into low Earth orbit, then later re-ignited to push it on towards the Moon (an event NASA called the translunar injection).

The Saturn V flew 13 times, all between 1967 and 1973. It carried every Apollo Moon mission as well as the Skylab space station. Despite its complexity, not a single Saturn V launch failed. Many of its original engines and components are now in museums, and a complete unflown Saturn V is on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. No rocket since has matched its raw power for putting people beyond Earth orbit.

For more space history see history of space travel. For modern crewed flight see the International Space Station. For private rockets see SpaceX.