Even if we don’t hear much about walking on the moon these days – although NASA and other space agencies have made it more of a priority in recent years – everyone knows that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969.
They were the first, but how many people have walked on the moon’s surface since?
Let’s talk about it, because there are a startling number of people who seem to think we never went back after that first successful landing – or who believe it never happened at all.
In reality, the Apollo program returned to the moon five more times, and landed 10 more astronauts on the surface.
Four months after Armstrong and Aldrin landed in Apollo 11, the Oceanus Procellarum (Apollo 12) landed and astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean set foot on the lunar surface.
They were the first to use hammocks on another planet, and brought pieces of the robotic craft Surveyor 3 back to Earth.
Apollo 13 (as movie buffs might know) had to scrub their moon landing after a significant malfunction.
Apollo 14 landed on February 5, 1971, and Alan Shepard and Edger Mitchell became the fifth and sixth people to walk on the Moon. Shepard famously hit two golf balls from the lunar surface, and at 47 was the oldest person to go to the Moon.
Apollo 15 put David Scott and James Irwin on the Moon later that year, on July 30th. They used the first Lunar Roving Vehicle, becoming the first humans to drive on the Moon, and also performed the Galileo experiment.
This showed that objects – a feather and a hammer – fall to the ground with the same acceleration regardless of mass.
Alfred Worden performed an EVA (extravehicular activity) to retrieve cassettes from the Moon-mapping cameras on the outside of the module. The mission holds the record for the largest number of people exposed to the vacuum of space at the same time (at least by NASA).
The Apollo 16 mission landed John Young and Charles Duke on the moon in April of 1972. They spent almost 3 days there and brought back the largest rock ever returned, among other materials.
The rock, Big Muley, weighed 25.8 pounds.
The last astronauts went up during the Apollo 17 mission, and for now, remain the last humans to set foot on the moon.
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed on December 11, 1972 and explored the farther from their spacecraft than the astronauts who went before them.
They also spent the longest on the Moon and brought back the most samples, as well.
Interestingly, Schmitt was also the first person to realize he was allergic to Moon dust.
Though Moon landings became routine and slightly mundane after so many so close together, the truth is that they certainly be the opposite today.
The Artemis program intends to put people on the Moon once again, including the first woman, first person of color, and first non-US citizen on the lunar surface.
Artemis III is the first planned human ascent, and is currently scheduled to land in 2026.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about why we should be worried about the leak in the bottom of the ocean.
