How many people have walked on the Moon?

Although many people have flown into space, very few people have ever set foot on the Moon. Earth’s natural satellite is located at a distance of 370,000 km, relatively short in cosmic terms. The first two people to walk on the Moon were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission. Following in their footsteps, 10 other astronauts have traveled on the lunar surface on different missions. of the Apollo program, according to IFL Science.

Apollo 12

Just four months after Apollo 11, the next mission landed on the Moon in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) region. Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean landed on the surface of the Moon on November 19, 1969. The mission landed within range of the Surveyor 3 autonomous spacecraft. Conrad and Bean returned Surveyor 3 components to Earth. Apollo 12 was also the first mission to use hammocks on another celestial body because the two astronauts wanted to sleep more comfortably.

Apollo 14

The Apollo 13 mission encountered serious problems on the way to the Moon and was forced to postpone the landing. The third time humans set foot on Earth’s natural satellite was on February 5, 1971. Alan Shepard (first American in space) and Edgar Mitchell became the 5th and 6th people to walk on the Moon. Apollo 14 also encountered some problems but nothing too serious. The most famous event in the mission is Shepard hitting two golf balls. He is also the oldest person to set foot on the Moon (47 years old).

Apollo 15

David Scott and James Irwin landed on the Moon on July 20, 1971. NASA wanted to cut the budget, so there were many changes to the mission to make the most of resources, including the first use of the Lunar Rover, the first vehicle piloted by humans beyond Earth. Scott performed the famous Galileo experiment that demonstrated that objects fall to the ground with the same acceleration regardless of mass. He did so by dropping a feather and a hammer.

The mission also recorded Alfred Worden, who did not land on the Moon but performed an extravehicular activity (EVA) to collect video from two lunar mapping cameras outside the module when the module was 321,869 feet from Earth. km. This mission held the record for the largest number of people exposed to the vacuum of space at one time until the Polaris Dawn mission’s private spacewalk a month earlier.

Apollo 16

John Young and Charles Duke landed on the Moon on April 21, 1972. The pair spent nearly three days on the Moon, collecting material including Big Muley, the largest rock ever brought back from the celestial body by Apollo. The stone weighs 11.7 kg. The lunar lander is called Orion after one of the brightest constellations in the sky. Pilot Thomas Mattingly instead chose the name Casper for the command and service module because “there were too many serious things in this flight, so I decided to choose a humorous name,” he said.

Apollo 17

Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt are the last astronauts to walk on the Moon to date. They landed on December 11, 1972. Apollo 17 was the longest manned lunar landing mission, in which astronauts traveled the farthest from the spacecraft, spent the longest time on the Moon both in and out of the spacecraft, and retrieved lunar rock samples. The largest moon on Earth. Scientist Schmitt was also the first person to be allergic to lunar dust.