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1946 Project Diana bounces Radar waves off the moon, measuring the exact distance between the earth
and the moon and proving that the communication was possible between the earth and outerspace, effectively opening the space age.
1959 Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon as the first man-made object.
1961 Apollo program: President Kennedy
announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
1962 Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon. The space probe
later misses the Moon by 22,000 miles.
1962 The Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.
1964 Ranger 6 is launched by NASA
. Its mission is to carry television
cameras and to crash-land on the Moon.
1965 Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon, after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronaut
s.
1965 Ranger program: NASA
launches Ranger 9, which is the last in a series of unmanned lunar
space probe
s.
1966 The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
1966 The Soviet Union
launches Luna 10, which later becomes the first space probe
to enter orbit around the Moon.
1966 Luna 10 enters orbit around the Moon.
1966 Surveyor program: ''Surveyor 1'' lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first spacecraft
to soft land on another world.
1967 The Surveyor 3 probe lands on the Moon.
1968 U.S. spacecraft ''Apollo 8'' enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell
and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth
as a whole. The crew also reads from Genesis.
1968 U.S. spacecraft ''Apollo 8'' enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell
and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth
as a whole. The crew also reads from Genesis.
1969 Apollo program: ''Apollo 10
'''s lunar module flies to within 15,400 m of the Moon's surfa
1969 Apollo program: ''Apollo 10
'' returns to Earth
, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first manned Moon landing.
1969 Apollo program: ''Apollo 11'' (Neil Armstrong
, Buzz Aldrin
, Michael Collins) lifts off toward the first landing on the Moon.
1969 Apollo program: First man on the moon. The human race, represented by Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin
, lands on the Moon.
1969 The ''Apollo 11'' astronauts return from the first successful Moon landing, and are placed in biological isolation for several days, on the chance they may have brought back lunar germs. The airless lunar environment is later determined to preclude microscopic life.
1969 Apollo program: NASA
launches ''Apollo 12
'' (Pete Conrad
, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second manned mission to the Moon.
1969 Apollo program: ''Apollo 12
'' astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), becoming the third and fourth human
s to walk on the Moon.
1969 Apollo program: The ''Apollo 12
'' spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean
, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.
1970 Apollo program: ''Apollo 13'' (Jim Lovell
, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon. On April 13, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission. They return safely to Earth on April 17.
1970 Luna program: The Soviet Union
lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.
1971 ''Apollo 14
'' lands on the Moon.
1971 Apollo program: ''Apollo 14
'' returns to Earth
after the third manned Moon landing.
1971 ''Apollo 15
'' astronauts David Scott
and James Irwin
become the first to ride in a lunar rover, a day after landing on the Moon.
1972 The Soviet
unmanned spaceship
Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
1972 ''Apollo 17'' (Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, Harrison Schmitt), the last manned mission to the Moon, is launched.
1998 The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles.
1998 NASA
announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
1999 NASA
intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft
into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the lunar surfa
2000 A rare conjunction occurs on the New Moon, including all seven of the traditional celestial bodies known from ancient times up until 1781 with the discovery of Uranus. The May 2000 conjunction consisted of: the Sun
and Moon, Mercury
, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
2004 The European Space Agency
probe, Smart 1, passes from orbit of the Earth
into orbit of the Moon.
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Timeline
