query: when was the first moon landing and what was the name of the spacecraft

pos: Apollo 11 Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module "Eagle" on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours after landing on July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC; Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Command Module Pilot Michael Collins piloted the command module "Columbia" alone

pos: Apollo 8 planned length of time, the crew would have appeared early from behind the Moon. Exactly at the calculated moment, however, the signal was received from the spacecraft, indicating it was in a orbit around the Moon. After reporting on the status of the spacecraft, Lovell gave the first description of what the lunar surface looked like: Lovell continued to describe the terrain they were passing over. One of the crew's major tasks was reconnaissance of planned future landing sites on the Moon, especially one in Mare Tranquillitatis that was planned as the Apollo 11 landing site. The launch time of

pos: Spacecraft call signs the three-man crews to name both craft for each of their missions, and these names were used as the call signs. A temporary exception to this was on the first Moon landing, Apollo 11: since the first Moon landing site was in the Sea of Tranquillity, the call sign "Tranquillity Base" was used while the LM was on the lunar surface. Before and after independent flight of the LM, the mission number was used as the call sign. The Apollo call signs were: For project Skylab, the practice returned to using the mission name as the spacecraft call sign, since

pos: Moon landing not only the large Descent Stages of the lunar landers left behind but also tracks of the astronauts' walking paths in the lunar dust. Moon landing A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and

pos: Moon landing Moon landing A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013. To date, the United States is

pos: Colonization of the Moon the Soviet leadership made some of its first public pronouncements about landing a man on the Moon and establishing a lunar base. Crewed exploration of the lunar surface began in 1968 when the Apollo 8 spacecraft orbited the Moon with three astronauts on board. This was mankind's first direct view of the far side. The following year, the Apollo 11 Apollo Lunar Module landed two astronauts on the Moon, proving the ability of humans to travel to the Moon, perform scientific research work there, and bring back sample materials. Additional missions to the Moon continued this exploration phase. In 1969,

pos: NASA a flight around the Moon in December 1968. Shortly before, the Soviets had sent an unmanned spacecraft around the Moon. On the next two missions docking maneuvers that were needed for the Moon landing were practiced and then finally the Moon landing was made on the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. The first person to stand on the Moon was Neil Armstrong, who was followed by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins orbited above. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. Throughout these six Apollo spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon.

pos: Chang'e is said to endow her worshippers with beauty. Chang'e was mentioned in a conversation between Houston CAPCOM and the Apollo 11 crew just before the first Moon landing in 1969: In 2007, China launched its first lunar probe, a robotic spacecraft named Chang'e 1 in the goddess' honour. A second unmanned probe, named Chang'e 2, was launched in 2010. A third Chang'e spacecraft, a robotic lunar rover dubbed Chang'e 3, landed on the moon on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013 at about 9:12 p.m., Beijing time, making China only the third country in the world to achieve such a moon feat

pos: Apollo 9 to land on the Moon; when the crews for Apollo 8 and 9 were swapped, their backup crews were also swapped. Since the rule of thumb was for backup crews to fly as prime crew three missions later, this put Neil Armstrong's crew (Borman's backup) in position for the first landing mission Apollo 11 instead of Pete Conrad's crew, who made the second landing on Apollo 12. Apollo 9 was the first space test of the complete Apollo spacecraft, including the third critical piece of Apollo hardware besides the command and service module and the Saturn V launch vehicle—the lunar

pos: Space Race joined him on the surface almost 20 minutes later. Altogether, they spent just under two and one-quarter hours outside their craft. The next day, they performed the first launch from another celestial body, and rendezvoused back with "Columbia". Apollo 11 left lunar orbit and returned to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969. When the spacecraft splashed down, 2,982 days had passed since Kennedy's commitment to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth before the end of the decade; the mission was completed with 161 days to spare. With the

pos: Mare Tranquillitatis for the Black Sea) in his 1647 map. In February 1965, the Ranger 8 spacecraft was deliberately crashed into the Mare Tranquillitatis, after successfully transmitting 7,137 close-range photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission. Surveyor 5 landed in Mare Tranquillitatis on September 11, 1967, and was the fifth lunar lander of the uncrewed Surveyor program. This mare was also the landing site for the first crewed landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. After astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made a smooth touchdown in the Apollo 11 Lunar Module named

pos: Apollo 21 Apollo 21 "Apollo 21" is an apocryphal reference to an eleventh manned Moon landing mission of NASA's Apollo program. Apollo contracted for the construction of fifteen Saturn V launch vehicles used to launch the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, and achieved the first manned landing with the sixth one (Apollo 11), leaving nine for follow-on lunar missions, through Apollo 20. However, budget cuts caused NASA to cancel the last three missions, ending the lunar program after Apollo 17. One Saturn V was used to launch the Skylab space station, and parts of the other two became museum displays. An "Apollo

pos: Space Race safe completion of the Apollo 11 mission, the Americans won the race to the Moon. NASA had ambitious follow-on human spaceflight plans as it reached its lunar goal, but soon discovered it had expended most of its political capital to do so. The first landing was followed by another, precision landing on Apollo 12 in November 1969. NASA had achieved its first landing goal with enough Apollo spacecraft and Saturn V launchers left for eight follow-on lunar landings through Apollo 20, conducting extended-endurance missions and transporting the landing crews in Lunar Roving Vehicles on the last five. They also planned

pos: Space exploration on 16 June 1963. China first launched a person into space 42 years after the launch of "Vostok 1", on 15 October 2003, with the flight of Yang Liwei aboard the "Shenzhou 5" (Divine Vessel 5) spacecraft. The first artificial object to reach another celestial body was Luna 2 in 1959. The first automatic landing on another celestial body was performed by Luna 9 in 1966. Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon. The first crewed landing on another celestial body was performed by Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969. The first successful interplanetary flyby was the

neg: Robert Frimtzis Surveyor program. The department developed the trajectories for all Surveyor spacecraft flights. Additionally, he managed the Liftoff and Translation experiment. It proved that spacecraft engines can be reignited on the lunar surface, a task which was not a Surveyor technical requirement. The Surveyor was the first unmanned spacecraft to soft land on the moon. In addition to collecting and analyzing lunar samples, and photographing the surface of the moon, it proved the principle of soft landing a spacecraft on the lunar surface, and selected the landing corridor for the future Apollo manned flights. Later, as the engineering department manager, and

neg: Moon landing unmanned ones to the surface of the Moon. Of particular importance was developing the expertise to perform flight operations in lunar orbit. Ranger, Surveyor and initial Luna Moon landing attempts all utilized flight paths from Earth that traveled directly to the lunar surface without first placing the spacecraft in a lunar orbit. Such direct ascents use a minimum amount of fuel for unmanned spacecraft on a one-way trip. In contrast, manned vehicles need additional fuel after a lunar landing to enable a return trip back to Earth for the crew. Leaving this massive amount of required Earth-return fuel in lunar

neg: Moon Express Prize teams over the past several months, we have concluded that no team will make a launch attempt to reach the moon by the March 31, 2018, deadline." Google would have awarded $30 million to the first team to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon and deliver data, images and video from the landing site and from 500 meters away from its landing site. The company's robotic spacecraft are modular and scalable platforms that can be configured as landers or orbiters. All MoonEx robotic spacecraft use low-toxicity fuels, advanced carbon composites and silicates and a Moon Express PECO rocket

neg: Docking and berthing of spacecraft The Apollo program depended on lunar orbit rendezvous to achieve its objective of landing men on the Moon. This required first a transposition, docking, and extraction maneuver between the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) mother spacecraft and the Lunar Module (LM) landing spacecraft, shortly after both craft were sent out of Earth orbit on a path to the Moon. Then after completing the lunar landing mission, two astronauts in the LM had to rendezvous and dock with the CSM in lunar orbit, in order to be able to return to Earth. The spacecraft were designed to permit intra-vehicular crew transfer through

neg: Apollo PGNCS Two PGNCS alarms (1201 "No VAC areas available" and 1202 "Executive alarm, no core sets") were relayed to mission control on the first lunar landing attempt on July 20th 1969. The computer system overload was caused by the simultaneous capture of landing radar data and rendezvous radar data. Apollo PGNCS The Apollo Primary Guidance, Navigation and Control System (PGNCS) (pronounced "pings") was a self-contained inertial guidance system that allowed Apollo spacecraft to carry out their missions when communications with Earth were interrupted, either as expected, when the spacecraft were behind the Moon, or in case of a communications failure. The

neg: Moon landing limits of human endurance even during a nominal reentry. Slight variations in the vehicle flight path and reentry angle during a return from the Moon can easily result in fatal levels of deceleration force. Achieving a manned circumlunar loop flight prior to a manned lunar landing became a primary goal of the Soviets with their Zond spacecraft program. The first three Zonds were unmanned planetary probes; after that, the Zond name was transferred to a completely separate manned program. The initial focus of these later Zonds was extensive testing of required high-speed reentry techniques. This focus was not shared by

neg: Surveyor program Surveyor program The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. The Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestrial body. The missions called for the craft to travel directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory, a journey that lasted 63 to 65 hours, and ended with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing. The program was implemented by NASA's

neg: Moon landing and 1966, using a totally new second-generation spacecraft design that had little in common with the earlier Mercury. These Gemini missions went on to prove critical techniques for orbital rendezvous and docking that were crucial to a manned lunar landing mission profile. After the end of the Gemini program, the Soviets Union began flying their second-generation Zond manned spacecraft in 1967 with the ultimate goal of looping a cosmonaut around the Moon and returning him immediately to Earth. The Zond spacecraft was launched with the simpler and already operational Proton launch rocket, unlike the parallel Soviet manned Moon landing effort

neg: LADEE the lunar surface. Contact with the spacecraft was lost around 04:30 UTC on April 18 when it moved behind the Moon. LADEE struck the Moon's far side surface some time between 04:30 and 05:22 at a speed of . The far side of the Moon was chosen to avoid the possibility of damaging historically important locations such as the Luna and Apollo landing sites. NASA used the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to image the impact location, which was determined to be near the eastern rim of Sundman V crater. LADEE is the first spacecraft designed, integrated, built, and tested by NASA's

neg: Moon landing the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. After the unsuccessful attempt by the Luna 1 to land on the Moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard (unpowered) Moon landing later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4. Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976. In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first

neg: Landing soft-land on the moon. Several Soviet rockets including the Soyuz spacecraft have used parachutes and airbag landing systems to dampen the landing on earth. In November 2015, Blue Origin's New Shepard became the first rocket to cross the van Karman line and land vertically back on Earth. In December 2015, SpaceX's Falcon 9 became the first launch vehicle on an orbital trajectory to successfully vertically-land and recover its first stage, although the landed first stage was on a sub-orbital trajectory. Landing Landing is the last part of a flight, where a flying animal, aircraft, or spacecraft returns to the ground.

neg: Luna 5 failures, the soft landing attempt failed, and "Luna 5" impacted the Moon. The place of impact was firstly announced as (coast of Mare Nubium), but later it was estimated as (near crater Copernicus). It was the second Soviet spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, following "Luna 2" in 1959. An observatory noted a plume produced by the impact, which was visible for ten minutes. Luna 5 Luna 5, or E-6 No.10, was an unmanned Soviet spacecraft intended to land on the Moon as part of the Luna programme. It was intended to become the first spacecraft to achieve

neg: Moon landing destroyed in another unmanned test when it was finally launched several weeks later. By this time flights of the third generation U.S. Apollo spacecraft had begun. Far more capable than the Zond, the Apollo spacecraft had the necessary rocket power to slip into and out of lunar orbit and to make course adjustments required for a safe reentry during the return to Earth. The Apollo 8 mission carried out the first manned trip to the Moon on 24 December 1968, certifying the Saturn V booster for manned use and flying not a circumlunar loop but instead a full ten orbits

neg: Lander (spacecraft) be accomplished by controlled descent and setdown on landing gear, with the possible addition of a post-landing attachment mechanism for celestial bodies with low gravity. Some missions (for example, Luna 9 and Mars Pathfinder), used inflatable airbags to cushion the lander's impact rather than a more traditional landing gear. When a high velocity impact is planned not for just achieving the surface but for study of consequences of impact, the spacecraft is called an impactor. Several terrestrial bodies have been subject of lander or impactor exploration: among them Earth's Moon, the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury, the Saturn moon Titan,

neg: Surveyor program in the Space Race with the Soviet Union. Thus, the Surveyor 1 landing in June 1966, only four months after the Soviet Luna 9 probe landed in February, was an indication the programs were at similar stages. Surveyor program The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. The Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestrial body. The missions called for the craft to

neg: Moon landing was to slow and the landing sphere to a dead stop at above the surface and separate, allowing the landing sphere to free fall once more and hit the surface. On Ranger 3, failure of the Atlas guidance system and a software error aboard the Agena upper stage combined to put the spacecraft on a course that would miss the Moon. Attempts to salvage lunar photography during a flyby of the Moon were thwarted by in-flight failure of the onboard flight computer. This was probably because of prior heat sterilization of the spacecraft by keeping it above the boiling point

neg: Chang'e 4 Chang'e 4 Chang'e 4 () is a Chinese lunar exploration mission that aims to achieve the first soft-landing on the far side of the Moon. A communication relay satellite, Queqiao, was first launched to a halo orbit near the Earth-Moon L2 point in May 2018. The robotic lander and rover were launched on 7 December 2018, and landing is scheduled for 3 January 2019. The mission is the follow-up to Chang'e 3, the first Chinese landing on the Moon. The spacecraft was originally built as a backup for Chang'e 3 and became available after it landed successfully. The configuration of

neg: Apollo (spacecraft) Moon and return to lunar orbit, and was the first true "spaceship" since it flew solely in the vacuum of space. It consisted of a "descent stage" and an "ascent stage". It supplied life support systems for two astronauts for up to four to five days on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions. The spacecraft was designed and manufactured by the Grumman Aircraft Company. The descent stage contained the landing gear, landing radar antenna, descent propulsion system, and fuel to land on the Moon. It also had several cargo compartments used to carry, among other things: the Apollo Lunar

neg: Soviet crewed lunar programs heavy UR-500K rocket (later renamed the Proton rocket) and a two-crew LK-1 spacecraft. Later, Chelomei also proposed a Moon landing program with a super-heavy UR-700 rocket and an LK-700(LK-3) spacecraft. The Soviet government issued a response to the American Apollo challenge after three years. According to the first government decree about the Soviet crewed Moon programs (Decree 655-268, ' "On Work on the Exploration of the Moon and Mastery of Space" '), adopted in August 1964, Chelomei was instructed to develop a Moon flyby program with a projected first flight by the end of 1966, and Korolev was instructed to

neg: Luna 5 Luna 5 Luna 5, or E-6 No.10, was an unmanned Soviet spacecraft intended to land on the Moon as part of the Luna programme. It was intended to become the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, however its retrorockets failed, and the spacecraft impacted the lunar surface. "Luna 5" was launched by a Molniya-M carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Liftoff occurred at 07:49:37 UTC on 9 May 1965. The spacecraft and Blok L upper stage entered a low Earth parking orbit, before the Blok L fired to propel "Luna 5" towards

neg: Moon landing instrumental in allowing the key 1965 NASA budget appropriation to pass through the United States Congress intact without a reduction in funds for the Apollo manned Moon landing program. Subsequent successes with Ranger 8 and Ranger 9 further buoyed U.S. hopes. The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union, performed the first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February, 1966. Airbags protected its ejectable capsule which survived an impact speed of over . Luna 13 duplicated this feat with a similar Moon landing on 24 December 1966. Both returned panoramic photographs that were the first views from the lunar

neg: Moon close-up pictures; the Lunar Orbiter program produced maps of the entire Moon; the Surveyor program landed its first spacecraft four months after "Luna 9". The manned Apollo program was developed in parallel; after a series of unmanned and manned tests of the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit, and spurred on by a potential Soviet lunar flight, in 1968 Apollo 8 made the first manned mission to lunar orbit. The subsequent landing of the first humans on the Moon in 1969 is seen by many as the culmination of the Space Race. Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on

neg: NASA These missions returned a wealth of scientific data and of lunar samples. Topics covered by experiments performed included soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismology, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields, and solar wind. The Moon landing marked the end of the space race; and as a gesture, Armstrong mentioned mankind when he stepped down on the Moon. Apollo set major milestones in human spaceflight. It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit, and landing humans on another celestial body. Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while Apollo 17 marked the last moonwalk and

neg: Sinus Iridum of the first image including video by JAXA's probe Kaguya were taken and recorded alongside Montes Jura and Mare Imbrium and the promontories of Heraclides and Laplace on October 31, 2007. The spacecraft took the world's first high definition image data of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon on October 31, 2007. It was the planned landing site of Chang'e 3, China's 2013 lunar exploration mission, which instead landed nearby in Mare Imbrium. The feature was given the Latin name for the Bay of Rainbows by Giovanni Riccioli, whose 1651 nomenclature system has become

neg: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 12 was not rebuilt following the explosion of Atlas 9C. It then hosted more ICBM tests along with the second and third Atlas Able probes. In 1961, LC-12 was converted to support the Atlas-Agena rocket. The first Atlas-Agena launch from LC-12 was in August 1961. On 23 April 1962, Atlas-Agena B 133D launched Ranger 4, the first American spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, when it made a hard landing at an impact speed of . On 27 August 1962, Mariner 2 was launched by Atlas-Agena B 179D, the first spacecraft conduct a successful flyby of another planet when

neg: Moon landing Moon landing by hard landing a seismometer package; and Block III, which would crash onto the lunar surface without any braking rockets while taking very high resolution wide-area photographs of the Moon during their descent. The Ranger 1 and 2 Block I missions were virtually identical. Spacecraft experiments included a Lyman-alpha telescope, a rubidium-vapor magnetometer, electrostatic analyzers, medium-energy-range particle detectors, two triple coincidence telescopes, a cosmic-ray integrating ionization chamber, cosmic dust detectors, and scintillation counters. The goal was to place these Block I spacecraft in a very high Earth orbit with an apogee of and a perigee of . From

neg: Moon landing conspiracy theories early 1968, NASA secretly approached Kubrick to direct the first three Moon landings. The launch and splashdown would be real but the spacecraft would stay in Earth orbit and fake footage broadcast as "live from the Moon." No evidence was offered for this theory, which overlooks many facts. For example, "2001" was released before the first Apollo landing and Kubrick's depiction of the Moon's surface differs greatly from its appearance in the Apollo footage. The movement of characters on the Moon in "2001" differs from that of the filmed movement of Apollo astronauts, and does not resemble an environment with

neg: Apollo spacecraft feasibility study results, President John F. Kennedy proposed the Moon landing objective to the US Congress, giving the Apollo program a clear focus and sense of urgency. NASA turned its focus to what relevant data could be mined from the proposals (abandoning the mission module), and launched another competition for the hardware procurement phase, fixing the reentry module configuration to the conical shape designed by Maxime Faget. NASA awarded the contract for the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) to North American Aviation on November 28, 1961, when it was still assumed the lunar landing would be achieved by direct descent or Earth orbit

neg: Moon landing launch, and GRAIL B followed about eight minutes later. The first probe entered orbit on 31 December 2011 and the second followed on 1 January 2012. The two spacecraft impacted the Lunar surface on 17 December 2012. LADEE was launched on 7 September 2013. The mission ended on 18 April 2014, when the spacecraft's controllers intentionally crashed LADEE into the far side of the Moon, which, later, was determined to be near the eastern rim of Sundman V crater. On 14 December 2013 at 13:12 UTC Chang'e 3 soft-landed a rover on the Moon. This was the first lunar soft

neg: Surveyor 4 burn. Surveyor 4 Surveyor 4 was the fourth lunar lander in the American unmanned Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon. This spacecraft crashed after an otherwise flawless mission; telemetry contact was lost 2.5 minutes before touchdown. The planned landing target was Sinus Medii (Central Bay) at 0.4° north latitude and 1.33° west longitude. This spacecraft was the fourth in a series designed to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and to return photography of the lunar surface for determining characteristics of the lunar terrain for Apollo lunar landing missions. Equipment on board included a television

neg: Surveyor 4 Surveyor 4 Surveyor 4 was the fourth lunar lander in the American unmanned Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon. This spacecraft crashed after an otherwise flawless mission; telemetry contact was lost 2.5 minutes before touchdown. The planned landing target was Sinus Medii (Central Bay) at 0.4° north latitude and 1.33° west longitude. This spacecraft was the fourth in a series designed to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and to return photography of the lunar surface for determining characteristics of the lunar terrain for Apollo lunar landing missions. Equipment on board included a television camera

neg: Moon landing a small vial of ashes from the body of pioneer lunar scientist Eugene Shoemaker was delivered by the Lunar Prospector to the crater named in his honor – currently the only human remains on the Moon. Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon on 3 April 1966. It is possible to aim a spacecraft from Earth so that it will loop around the Moon and return to Earth without entering lunar orbit, following the so-called free return trajectory. Such circumlunar loop missions are simpler than lunar orbit missions because rockets for lunar orbit braking and Earth return

neg: Soyuz 7K-L1 No.4L to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been a test of a spacecraft intended for manned Lunar flights. However, they were unsure whether it was intended to reach the Moon itself. Soyuz 7K-L1 No.4L Soyuz 7K-L1 No.4L, sometimes identified by NASA as Zond 1967A, was a Soviet spacecraft which was launched in 1967 as part of the Zond programme. It was a Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft, the first of nine to be launched. Although it was intended to perform a circumlunar flyby of the Moon before returning to the Earth for landing, it failed

neg: Joseph Francis Shea was hired by NASA, President John F. Kennedy's commitment to landing men on the Moon was still only seven months old, and many of the major decisions that shaped the Apollo program were yet to be made. Foremost among these was the mode that NASA would use to land on the Moon. When Shea first began to consider the issue in 1962, most NASA engineers and managersincluding Wernher von Braun, the director of the Marshall Space Flight Centerfavored either an approach called direct ascent, where the Apollo spacecraft would land on the Moon and return to the Earth as one

neg: Moon landing of water for 24 hours on the ground, to protect the Moon from being contaminated by Earth organisms. Heat sterilization was also blamed for subsequent in-flight failures of the spacecraft computer on Ranger 4 and the power subsystem on Ranger 5. Only Ranger 4 reached the Moon in an uncontrolled crash impact on the far side of the Moon. Heat sterilization was discontinued for the final four Block III Ranger probes. These replaced the Block II landing capsule and its retrorocket with a heavier, more capable television system to support landing site selection for upcoming Apollo manned Moon landing missions.

neg: Luna 7 Luna 7 Luna 7 (E-6 series) was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Luna program, also called Lunik 7. The "Luna 7" spacecraft was intended to achieve a soft landing on the Moon. However, due to premature retrofire and cutoff of the retrorockets, the spacecraft impacted the lunar surface in Oceanus Procellarum. Unlike its predecessors successfully carried out its mid-course correction on October 5 on the way to the Moon, in anticipation of a soft-landing two days later. However, immediately prior to planned retro-fire during the approach to the lunar surface, the spacecraft suddenly lost attitude control and failed

neg: Moon landing were deliberately crashed on the Moon several times to provide impacts registering as a moonquake on seismometers that had been left on the lunar surface. Such crashes were instrumental in mapping the internal structure of the Moon. To return to Earth, the escape velocity of the Moon must be overcome for the spacecraft to escape the gravity well of the Moon. Rockets must be used to leave the Moon and return to space. Upon reaching Earth, atmospheric entry techniques are used to absorb the kinetic energy of a returning spacecraft and reduce its speed for safe landing. These functions greatly

neg: Luna 4 Luna 4 Luna 4, or E-6 No.4 was a Soviet spacecraft launched as part of the Luna program to attempt the first soft landing on the Moon. Following a successful launch, the spacecraft failed to perform a course correction and as a result it missed the moon, remaining instead in Earth orbit. "Luna 4" was launched by a Molniya-L carrier rocket at 08:16:37 UTC on 2 April 1963. Launch occurred from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. After reaching an initial parking orbit of , the rocket's upper stage restarted to place Luna 4 onto a translunar trajectory. The spacecraft

neg: Soyuz 7 intended, but this seems unlikely, given the docking adapters carried by the spacecraft, and the fact that the Soyuz 8 crew were both veterans of the previous successful docking mission. This was the last time that the Soviet manned Moon landing hardware was tested in orbit, and the failure seems to have been one of the final nails in the coffin of the programme. The radio call sign of the spacecraft was , meaning "blizzard", which years later was re-used as the name of the entirely different spaceplane Buran. This word is apparently used as the name of an active

neg: Mars landing successfully photographed while landing, since this was the first time one spacecraft captured the landing of another spacecraft onto a planetary body (the Moon not being a planet, but a satellite). "Phoenix" was followed by the Mars Science Laboratory, a rover more capable than "Spirit" and "Opportunity". Originally the Mars Science Laboratory was intended for a launch during 2009 however, it was launched on November 26, 2011. Russia launched Fobos-Grunt, a sample return mission to Phobos, along with the joint Chinese Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter in November 2011, which went into Earth orbit successfully, but failed to launch to Mars. The

neg: Direct ascent much like a smaller version of the spider-like Lunar Module, although OKB-52 continued to develop the UR-700 modular booster for the direct ascent LK-700 ship. Science fiction movies such as "Destination Moon" had frequently depicted direct ascent missions. Direct ascent Direct ascent is a method of landing a spacecraft on the Moon or another planet directly, without first assembling the vehicle in Earth orbit, or carrying a separate landing vehicle into orbit around the target body. It was proposed as the first method to achieve a manned lunar landing in the United States Apollo program, but was rejected because it

neg: Moon landing a spacecraft must first leave the gravity well of the Earth. The only practical way of accomplishing this currently is with a rocket. Unlike other airborne vehicles such as balloons or jets, a rocket is the only known form of propulsion which can continue to increase its speed at high altitudes in the vacuum outside the Earth's atmosphere. Upon approach of the target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. In order to land intact it must decelerate to less than about and be ruggedized to withstand a "hard landing"

neg: Clavius Base impacts and solar radiation. Incoming spacecraft set down on a landing platform beneath a dome which opens as the vessel descends. The landing platform is part of an enormous elevator, which lowers the spacecraft into a cavernous docking bay, illuminated in red. Clavius Base is, apparently, the central focus of American activities on the Moon, and is under the control of the United States Astronautics Agency. Clavius Base was placed under a quarantine with the cover story of an epidemic when the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly TMA-1 artifact was excavated. Dr. Heywood R. Floyd traveled to the base to investigate the

neg: Moon landing are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability. The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959. Crash landings may occur because of malfunctions in a spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an onboard landing rocket. There have been many such Moon crashes, often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V moon rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the Lunar Module

neg: Moon escape Earth's gravity and pass near the Moon was "Luna 1"; the first human-made object to impact the lunar surface was "Luna 2", and the first photographs of the normally occluded far side of the Moon were made by "Luna 3", all in 1959. The first spacecraft to perform a successful lunar soft landing was "Luna 9" and the first unmanned vehicle to orbit the Moon was "Luna 10", both in 1966. Rock and soil samples were brought back to Earth by three "Luna" sample return missions ("Luna 16" in 1970, "Luna 20" in 1972, and "Luna 24" in 1976),

neg: Saturn (rocket family) which was capable of flying to the Moon, landing and returning to Earth. To launch such a large spacecraft, a new booster with much greater power would be needed; even the Saturn was not nearly large enough. NASA started examining a number of potential rocket designs under their Nova program. NASA was not alone in studying manned lunar missions. von Braun had always expressed an interest in this goal, and had been studying what would be required for a lunar mission for some time. ABMA's Project Horizon proposed using fifteen Saturn launches to carry up spacecraft components and fuel that

neg: Huygens (spacecraft) Huygens (spacecraft) Huygens was an atmospheric entry probe that landed successfully on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005. Built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), it was part of the "Cassini–Huygens" mission and became the first spacecraft ever to land on Titan and the farthest landing from Earth a spacecraft has ever made. The probe was named after the Dutch 17th-century astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Titan in 1655. The combined "Cassini–Huygens" spacecraft was launched from Earth on October 15, 1997. "Huygens" separated from the "Cassini" orbiter on December 25, 2004, and landed on Titan on January 14, 2005

neg: Surveyor 2 single unmanned spacecraft designed and built by Hughes Aircraft Company. The precise location of the Surveyor 2 crash site is unknown. Surveyor 2 Surveyor 2 was to be the second lunar lander in the unmanned American Surveyor program to explore the Moon. It was launched September 20, 1966 from Cape Kennedy, Florida aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket. A mid-course correction failure resulted in the spacecraft losing control. Contact was lost with the spacecraft at 9:35 UTC, September 22. On February 3, 1966 Luna 9 spacecraft was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to

neg: Japan's space development when the landing on Itokawa, which had been most likely unable to collect samples of the asteroid, which contains a sample of asteroids in the capsules were returned, by which the spacecraft World The spacecraft was first brought back samples from an asteroid. In June 2014 Japan's science and technology ministry said it was considering a space mission to Mars. In a ministry paper it indicated unmanned exploration, manned missions to Mars and long-term settlement on the Moon were objectives, for which international cooperation and support was going to be sought. Japan's space development Institute of Industrial Science, which began

neg: Luna E-6 No.2 Luna E-6 No.2 Luna E-6 No.2, also identified as No.1, and sometimes known in the West as Sputnik 25, was a Soviet spacecraft which launched in 1963, but was placed into a useless orbit due to a problem with the upper stage of the rocket that launched it. It was a Luna E-6 spacecraft, the first of twelve to be launched, It was intended to be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, a goal which would eventually be accomplished by the final E-6 spacecraft, Luna 9. Luna E-6 No.2 was launched at 08:49 UTC on

neg: Surveyor 6 Surveyor 6 Surveyor 6 was the sixth lunar lander of the American unmanned Surveyor program that reached the surface of the Moon. Surveyor 6 landed on the Sinus Medii. A total of 30,027 images were transmitted to Earth. This spacecraft was the fourth of the Surveyor series to successfully achieve a soft landing on the moon, obtain post landing television pictures, determine the abundance of the chemical elements in the lunar soil, obtain touchdown dynamics data, obtain thermal and radar reflectivity data, and conduct a Vernier engine erosion experiment. Virtually identical to Surveyor 5, this spacecraft carried a television camera,

neg: Apollo program Apollo program The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished landing the first humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972. First conceived during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration as a three-man spacecraft to follow the one-man Project Mercury which put the first Americans in space, Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the 1960s, which he proposed in

neg: Sergei Korolev 1, and on 7 October 1959 was the first spacecraft to photograph the far side of the Moon. Korolev's group was also working on ambitious programs for missions to Mars and Venus, putting a man in orbit, launching communication, spy and weather satellites, and making a soft-landing on the Moon. A radio communication center needed to be built in the Crimea, near Simferopol and near Evpatoria to control the spacecraft. Many of these projects were not realized in his lifetime, and none of the planetary probes performed a completely successful mission until after his death. Korolev's planning for the piloted

neg: Lunar orbit rendezvous 1965 and 1966 on six Project Gemini missions with the aid of radar and on-board computers. It was also successfully done each of the eight times it was tried on Apollo missions. When the Apollo Moon landing program was started in 1961, it was assumed that the three-man Command and Service Module combination (CSM) would be used for takeoff from the lunar surface, and return to Earth. It would therefore have to be landed on the Moon by a larger rocket stage with landing gear legs, resulting in a very large spacecraft (in excess of ) to be sent to

neg: Luna 9 died before the launch). The first 11 Luna missions were unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. At that time the project was transferred to Lavochkin design bureau since OKB-1 was busy with a manned expedition to the Moon. "Luna 9" was the twelfth attempt at a soft-landing by the Soviet Union; it was also the first successful deep space probe built by the Lavochkin design bureau, which ultimately would design and build almost all Soviet (later Russian) lunar and interplanetary spacecraft. All operations prior to landing occurred without fault, and the spheroid ALS capsule landed on the Moon at 18:45:30

neg: Luna 13 Luna 13 Luna 13 (E-6M series) was an unmanned space mission of the Luna program. The Luna 13 spacecraft was launched toward the Moon from an earth-orbiting platform and accomplished a soft landing on December 24, 1966, in the region of Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"). The petal encasement of the spacecraft was opened, antennas were erected, and radio transmissions to Earth began four minutes after the landing. On December 25 and December 26, 1966, the spacecraft television system transmitted panoramas of the nearby lunar landscape at different Sun angles. Each panorama required approximately 100 minutes to transmit. The spacecraft

neg: Lunar Orbiter 1 Lunar Orbiter 1 The Lunar Orbiter 1 unmanned robotic spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, was the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data. The spacecraft was placed in an Earth parking orbit on August 10, 1966, at 19:31 UTC. The trans-lunar injection burn occurred at 20:04 UTC. The spacecraft experienced a temporary failure of the Canopus star tracker (probably

neg: Luna 9 Luna 9 Luna 9 (Луна-9), internal designation Ye-6 No.13, was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Union's Luna programme. On 3 February 1966 the Luna 9 spacecraft became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon. The lander had a mass of . It used a landing bag to survive the impact speed of . It was a hermetically sealed container with radio equipment, a program timing device, heat control systems, scientific apparatus, power sources, and a television system. "Luna 9" was launched by a Molniya-M rocket, serial number 103-32, flying from Site 31/6 at the

neg: Surveyor 2 Surveyor 2 Surveyor 2 was to be the second lunar lander in the unmanned American Surveyor program to explore the Moon. It was launched September 20, 1966 from Cape Kennedy, Florida aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket. A mid-course correction failure resulted in the spacecraft losing control. Contact was lost with the spacecraft at 9:35 UTC, September 22. On February 3, 1966 Luna 9 spacecraft was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth. Several months after, Surveyor 1 launched on May 30, 1966; and landed on Oceanus Procellarum on June 2, 1966, also

neg: Soyuz 8 that no docking had been intended, but this seems unlikely, given the docking adapters carried by the spacecraft, and the fact that both Shatalov and Yeliseyev were veterans of the previous successful docking mission. This was the last time that the Soviet-crewed Moon landing hardware was tested in orbit, and the failure seems to have been one of the final nails in the coffin of the programme. The radio call sign of the spacecraft was , meaning "Granite". This word is apparently used as the name of a reactive or defensive squadron in Soviet military training, and, just like the

neg: Far side of the Moon 17 missions since that time, and photographed by multiple lunar probes. Spacecraft passing behind the Moon were out of direct radio communication with the Earth, and had to wait until the orbit allowed transmission. During the Apollo missions, the main engine of the Service Module was fired when the vessel was behind the Moon, producing some tense moments in Mission Control before the craft reappeared. Geologist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who became the last to step onto the Moon, had aggressively lobbied for his landing site to be on the far side of the Moon, targeting the lava-filled crater Tsiolkovskiy. Schmitt's ambitious

neg: Night of the Auk Night of the Auk Night of the Auk is a 1956 Broadway drama in three acts written by Arch Oboler. It is a science fiction drama in blank verse about space travelers returning to Earth after the first Moon landing. The play was based on Oboler's radio play "Rocket from Manhattan", which aired as part of "Arch Oboler's Plays" in September 1945. "Night of the Auk" was published in book form in 1958. The action takes place aboard a spacecraft returning from the first manned Moon landing, the crew of which witnesses nuclear war break out on Earth. In his

neg: Luna 4 amount, distribution, and sizes of ejecta, mechanical properties of the surface such as bearing strength, cohesiveness, compaction, etc. Determination and recognition of processes operating to produce the lunar surface features also were among the objectives of this photographic experiment. Luna 4 Luna 4, or E-6 No.4 was a Soviet spacecraft launched as part of the Luna program to attempt the first soft landing on the Moon. Following a successful launch, the spacecraft failed to perform a course correction and as a result it missed the moon, remaining instead in Earth orbit. "Luna 4" was launched by a Molniya-L carrier rocket

neg: N1 (rocket) Defense Purposes", set the first test launch of the N1 rocket for 1965. When the US announced in May 1961 the goal of landing a man on the Moon, Korolev proposed a lunar mission based on a new spacecraft, eventually known as Soyuz, that was designed for Earth orbit rendezvous. Several launches would be used to build up a complete moon package, one for the Soyuz, another for the lunar lander, and additional launches with cislunar engines and fuel. This approach makes the least demands on the launch vehicle, as the payload mass is reduced for any one launch. This

neg: Luna E-6 No.3 Luna E-6 No.3 Luna E-6 No.3, also identified as No.2 and sometimes by NASA as Luna 1963B, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1963. It was a Luna E-6 spacecraft, the second of twelve to be launched, and the second consecutive launch failure. It was intended to be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, a goal which would eventually be accomplished by the final E-6 spacecraft, Luna 9. Luna E-6 No.3 was launched at 09:26:14 UTC on 3 February 1963, atop a Molniya-L 8K78L carrier rocket, flying from Site

neg: Luna E-6 No.5 Luna E-6 No.5 Luna E-6 No.5, sometimes identified by NASA as Luna 1964B, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1964. It was a Luna E-6 spacecraft, the fifth of twelve to be launched, It was intended to be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, a goal which would eventually be accomplished by the final E-6 spacecraft, Luna 9. Luna E-6 No.5 was launched at 08:08:28 UTC on 20 April 1964, atop a Molniya-M 8K78M carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The power system on the

neg: Luna E-6 No.6 Luna E-6 No.6 Luna E-6 No.6, sometimes identified by NASA as Luna 1964A, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1964. It was a Luna E-6 spacecraft, the fourth of twelve to be launched, It was intended to be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, a goal which would eventually be accomplished by the final E-6 spacecraft, Luna 9. Luna E-6 No.6 was launched at 08:15:35 UTC on 21 March 1964, atop a Molniya-M 8K78M carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. A connecting rod in the

neg: Luna E-6 No.8 Luna E-6 No.8 Molniya-L Luna E-6 No.8, sometimes identified by NASA as Luna 1965A, was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1965. It was a Luna E-6 spacecraft, the seventh of twelve to be launched, It was intended to be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, a goal which would eventually be accomplished by the final E-6 spacecraft, Luna 9. Luna E-6 No.8 was launched on 10 April 1965, atop a Molniya-L 8K78L carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. During third stage flight, a nitrogen pipeline

neg: Colonization of the Moon the Apollo 12 mission landed next to the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, demonstrating precision landing capability. The use of a manned vehicle on the Moon's surface was demonstrated in 1971 with the Lunar Rover during Apollo 15. Apollo 16 made the first landing within the rugged lunar highlands. However, interest in further exploration of the Moon was beginning to wane among the American public. In 1972, Apollo 17 was the final Apollo lunar mission, and further planned missions were scrapped at the directive of President Nixon. Instead, focus was turned to the Space Shuttle and crewed missions in near Earth orbit.

neg: Human spaceflight crew of Apollo 13, Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise, survived a catastrophic in-flight spacecraft failure and returned to Earth safely without landing on the Moon. Meanwhile, the USSR secretly pursued human lunar orbiting and landing programs. They successfully developed the three-person Soyuz spacecraft for use in the lunar programs, but failed to develop the N1 rocket necessary for a human landing, and discontinued the lunar programs in 1974. On losing the Moon race, they concentrated on the development of space stations, using the Soyuz as a ferry to take cosmonauts to and from the stations. They started with a

neg: Mars Geyser Hopper it relies on. The Discovery program was started in the 1990s following discussions at NASA for a new program, and has achieved such missions as "Genesis", "Deep Impact" and "Kepler" among others; this is the program this mission was designed for selection in, at least initially. One of the first unmanned robotic spacecraft to do a hop was Surveyor 6 lunar lander, which successfully soft landed on the Moon 1967 and conducted a post-landing hop. Another possibly for a hopper mission may be Saturn's moon "Enceladus". Hoppers are noted for their ability to potentially visit different landing sites. Another hopper-type

neg: SpaceIL landing site, it will decelerate until soft-landing on the lunar surface. By June 2017, the lander spacecraft was undergoing integration and testing. Launch is scheduled for February 2019. SpaceIL SpaceIL is an Israeli organization, established in 2011, that was competing in the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) to land a spacecraft on the Moon. The contest declared no winner, but SpaceIL still aims to launch their spacecraft on 13 February 2019. SpaceIL team was formed as a nonprofit organization wishing to promote scientific and technological education in Israel. Its total budget is estimated at US$70 million, provided mainly by philanthropists

neg: Surveyor 2 transmitting photographic data back to Earth. This spacecraft was the second of a series designed to achieve a soft landing on the moon and to return lunar surface photography for determining characteristics of the lunar terrain for Apollo program lunar landing missions. Besides transmitting photos, Surveyor 2 was planned to perform a 'bounce', to photograph underneath its own landing site. It was also equipped to return data on radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, bearing strength of the lunar surface, and spacecraft temperatures for use in the analysis of lunar surface temperatures. the official cost was $469. The target area

neg: European Lunar Explorer Montes Carpatus. The spacecraft was designed to travel 500 metres after landing, in order to explore its landing site. ELL was the part of the spacecraft to land on the Moon, while ELE was the complete spacecraft, including the two stages intended to propel it from low Earth orbit to a trans-lunar trajectory. European Lunar Explorer The European Lunar Explorer (ELE) or European Lunar Lander (ELL) was a planned Romanian Lunar lander. It was being developed by ARCA, as an entrant for the Google Lunar X Prize, until it was cancelled in 2014. It was intended to have a mass

neg: LK (spacecraft) the snare-shaped probe of the LOK to fit in without precise alignment of the two craft. Due to weight restrictions, the docking interface was designed to be as simple as possible, with a strictly mechanical interlock and no electrical or fluid connections. Docking and undocking were only possible a single time. The LK spacecraft can be subdivided into the lunar landing aggregate ("Lunnyi Posadochnyi Agregat", "LPA") and the lunar ascent vehicle, ("Lunnyi Vzletnyi Apparat", "LVA'"). Propulsion, both for landing and lifting off the Moon was based on the Block E propulsion system. The Information Display System (spacecraft control panels and

neg: Direct ascent Direct ascent Direct ascent is a method of landing a spacecraft on the Moon or another planet directly, without first assembling the vehicle in Earth orbit, or carrying a separate landing vehicle into orbit around the target body. It was proposed as the first method to achieve a manned lunar landing in the United States Apollo program, but was rejected because it would have required developing a prohibitively large launch vehicle. It was used to launch uncrewed lunar landers in the United States Surveyor program and the Soviet Luna program. The Apollo program was initially planned based on the assumption

neg: Moon landing and thus this is the total velocity which must be shed from the target moon's gravitational attraction for a soft landing to occur. For Earth's Moon, the escape velocity is . The change in velocity (referred to as a delta-v) is usually provided by a landing rocket, which must be carried into space by the original launch vehicle as part of the overall spacecraft. An exception is the soft moon landing on Titan carried out by the "Huygens" probe in 2005. As the moon with the thickest atmosphere, landings on Titan may be accomplished by using atmospheric entry techniques that

neg: Moon landing every 96 minutes was widely viewed on both sides as effective propaganda to Third World countries demonstrating the technological superiority of the Soviet political system compared to that of the U.S. This perception was reinforced by a string of subsequent rapid-fire Soviet space achievements. In 1959, the R-7 rocket was used to launch the first escape from Earth's gravity into a solar orbit, the first crash impact onto the surface of the Moon, and the first photography of the never-before-seen far side of the Moon. These were the Luna 1, Luna 2, and Luna 3 spacecraft. The U.S. response to

neg: Landing gear the launch mount. Spacecraft designed to land safely on extraterrestrial bodies such as the Moon or Mars usually have landing gear. Such landers include the Apollo Lunar Module as well as a number of robotic space probe landers. Examples include Viking 1 lander, the first lander to successfully land on Mars (November 1976), and Philae which arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014 after a 10-year transit and landed on the comet on 12 November 2014. Spacecraft with landing gear designed for use on non-terrestrial surfaces now under development include Prospector-1, with launch planned by 2020, and the large "BFR spaceship",

neg: Luna 6 Luna 6 Luna 6, or E-6 No.7 was an unmanned Soviet spacecraft which was intended to perform a landing on the Moon as part of the Luna program. Due to the failure of a mid-course correction manoeuvre, "Luna 6" failed to land, instead flying past the Moon at a distance of . "Luna 6" was launched by a Molniya-M carrier rocket flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Liftoff occurred at 07:40 UTC on 8 June 1965, with the spacecraft and Blok L upper stage entering a low Earth parking orbit, before the upper stage propelled the spacecraft into

neg: Moon landing the launch window to the Moon opened for the Soviet launch site in Baikonur, giving the USSR their final chance to beat the US to the Moon. Cosmonauts went on alert and asked to fly the Zond spacecraft then in final countdown at Baikonur on the first manned trip to the Moon. Ultimately, however, the Soviet Politburo decided the risk of crew death was unacceptable given the combined poor performance to that point of Zond/Proton and so scrubbed the launch of a manned Soviet lunar mission. Their decision proved to be a wise one, since this unnumbered Zond mission was

neg: Luna E-8-5 No. 402 They designated that attempt "Luna 1969B". No Luna spacecraft or Proton rocket was launched on that date. Luna E-8-5 No. 402 Luna E-8-5 No.402, also known as Luna Ye-8-5 No.402, and sometimes identified by NASA as Luna 1969C, was a Soviet spacecraft under Luna programme which was lost in a launch failure in 1969. It was a Luna E-8-5 spacecraft, the first of at least eleven to be launched. It was intended to perform a soft landing on the Moon, collect a sample of lunar soil, and return it to the Earth. It was, along with Luna 15, one of

neg: Ljuva sextital as well as watching forwards to circa 1990. Despite being released before the first Moon landing (July 1969) the song lyrics include references to the Moonflights, who were planned as the Space Race was going on. (The Moon had been rounded by the United States with Apollo 8 spacecraft in December 1968, without landing). Ljuva sextital Ljuva sextital is a song written by Benny Andersson, Stig "Stikkan" Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus, and originally recorded by Brita Borg, released it as a 1969 single with the song "Jan Öiwind Swahn" acting as B-side, and Sven-Olof Walldoff's band acting as musicians. With

neg: 2010 in spaceflight 25143 Itokawa in an effort to collect samples. It was also the world's first successful sample return mission from an asteroid. On 1 October at 10:59:57 UTC, China successfully launched the Chang'e-2 spacecraft, the nation's second mission to explore the Moon. A Long March 3C rocket was used for the launch, which occurred from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre. The spacecraft conducted a mission similar to that of the earlier Chang'e-1 spacecraft, but with a focus on mapping potential landing sites in preparation for the Chang'e-3 unmanned lunar lander. Seven manned launches were planned for 2010, with three Space Shuttle

neg: Moon Ranger some more gathering and plundering. Gather all the gamma bomb parts to destroy the alien menace. Moon Ranger Moon Ranger is an action video game that was developed by Odyssey Software and published by Bunch Games. An alien species has set up a dormant spacecraft on the Moon to mine the solar system's resources. As a side note, this will destroy the Earth. The player must fly through outer space, destroying meteors and aliens along the way. Then, he must make a perfect landing and enter the first alien base. After fighting his way through and recovering a piece of

neg: Moon Ranger Moon Ranger Moon Ranger is an action video game that was developed by Odyssey Software and published by Bunch Games. An alien species has set up a dormant spacecraft on the Moon to mine the solar system's resources. As a side note, this will destroy the Earth. The player must fly through outer space, destroying meteors and aliens along the way. Then, he must make a perfect landing and enter the first alien base. After fighting his way through and recovering a piece of the gamma bomb that can destroy the aliens, it is off to the next base for

neg: Lunar orbit rendezvous Lunar orbit rendezvous Lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) is a key concept for efficiently landing humans on the Moon and returning them to Earth. It was utilized for the Project Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a LOR mission, a main spacecraft and a smaller lunar lander travel to lunar orbit. The lunar lander then independently descends to the surface of the Moon, while the main spacecraft remains in lunar orbit. After completion of the mission there, the lander returns to lunar orbit to rendezvous and re-dock with the main spacecraft, then is discarded after transfer of crew and