The Moon Landings

A footprint on another world

On 20 July 1969, a human being stepped onto a world that was not the Earth for the very first time. Neil Armstrong climbed down a ladder onto the dusty grey surface of the Moon and said the now-famous words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Around 600 million people — a fifth of everyone alive at the time — watched on television. It remains one of the greatest achievements in all of human history.

The story of how we got there is a story of competition, courage, brilliant engineering and a few terrifying close calls.

The space race

The Moon landings did not happen by accident. They grew out of the Cold War, a period of intense rivalry between two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. Neither side wanted open war, so they competed in other ways — and one of the biggest contests was in space.

The Soviet Union shocked the world by getting there first again and again. In 1957 they launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. In 1961 they sent Yuri Gagarin, the first human, into orbit. Stung by falling behind, US President John F. Kennedy set a bold goal in 1961: to land a person on the Moon and bring them safely home before the end of the decade.

It was an astonishing promise. At the time, the technology to do it did not yet exist. Meeting that deadline would take hundreds of thousands of workers, the most powerful rocket ever built, and one of the largest peacetime efforts in history.

Apollo: building the impossible

The American program to reach the Moon was called Apollo. To get there, engineers built the gigantic Saturn V rocket — taller than a 30-storey building and still the most powerful rocket ever flown successfully. It used multiple stages, dropping empty sections as it climbed to shed weight (the same staging idea used in rockets today).

The early Apollo missions tested each step. Apollo 8 flew around the Moon in 1968 — the first time humans left Earth's gravity — and its crew took the famous "Earthrise" photo of our blue planet hanging over the lunar horizon, an image that changed how people thought about our home.

Apollo 11: the first landing

On 16 July 1969, three astronauts launched aboard Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. After a three-day journey, Armstrong and Aldrin climbed into a small spidery lander called the Eagle and descended to the surface, while Collins stayed behind, orbiting alone in the command module.

The landing was nerve-racking. Alarms blared, and Armstrong had to take manual control to steer past a field of boulders, touching down with only seconds of fuel left. Then came his calm message to Earth: "The Eagle has landed."

Hours later, Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, followed by Aldrin. They planted a flag, set up experiments, collected rocks, and bounced around in gravity only one-sixth as strong as Earth's. After less than a day on the surface, they blasted back up to rejoin Collins and returned safely home.

What the astronauts found and brought back

In total, twelve astronauts walked on the Moon across six successful Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972. They explored, drove a battery-powered "Moon buggy" on later missions, and carried out scientific experiments.

Most valuable of all, they brought back 382 kilograms of Moon rocks and soil. Studying these samples taught scientists how old the Moon is and what it is made of. The rocks supported the leading idea that the Moon formed from debris flung into space when a Mars-sized object smashed into the young Earth, billions of years ago.

The astronauts also left behind mirrors. Scientists still bounce laser beams off them today to measure the exact distance to the Moon — proof, among much other evidence, that the landings truly happened.

Not every mission went smoothly. Apollo 13 suffered an explosion on the way to the Moon in 1970. The landing was cancelled, and the crew survived a desperate journey home using the lander as a lifeboat — a triumph of teamwork under pressure.

Why we stopped — and why we are going back

After 1972, the Moon landings stopped. The program was hugely expensive, and once the space race was "won", support faded. For the next 50 years, humans explored space closer to home, building space stations, while robots ventured to the planets.

Now that is changing. A new program called Artemis — named after the Greek goddess of the Moon and Apollo's twin sister — aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface, including the first woman to walk there. The goal this time is not just to visit but to stay: to learn how to live on another world, use its frozen water, and use the Moon as a stepping stone toward Mars.

Try it yourself: be a Moon observer

You can study the same Moon the astronauts visited, right from your window.

1. Watch the Moon over a month. Sketch its shape every clear night. You will see it change from a thin crescent to a full disc and back — the phases caused by sunlight hitting it from different angles.
2. Use binoculars. Even cheap binoculars reveal craters, mountains and dark plains called maria (Latin for "seas", though they hold no water). The Apollo missions landed on these plains.
3. Find a landing site. Look up a Moon map online and try to locate the Sea of Tranquillity, where Apollo 11 touched down. It is near the centre-right of the Moon's face.
4. Look along the day–night line. Craters look sharpest near the terminator, the line dividing the lit and dark halves, because long shadows make the surface stand out.

Want to learn more? Discover what daily life in orbit is like in Living in Space, and explore how the Moon changes shape in The Phases of the Moon.