Humanity has always been intrigued by travel beyond Earth with science fiction invariably associated with human travel not only beyond Earth and the Solar System but also into deep space. The first physical step to conquer space was realized in 1957 when Russia stunned the world when Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin would make history as the first human in outer space when he rode aboard the space capsule Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961 and where he proceeded to complete one orbit at 7,000 meters altitude lasting 108 minutes in duration.

The Soviet efforts immediately thereafter were directed at the Moon with the Luna series (1957-1976) which comprised of twenty-four total missions that were eventually characterized as dramatic successes or failures. Although the primary effort behind these missions was to lay the foundation for a future manned mission, something that would never eventually materialize, the various Luna probes accomplished a wide variety of achievements (and "firsts") including the imaging of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3), lunar impact crashes (Luna 2, 5, 7, 8 and 18), lunar flybys (Luna 1, 3 and 4), lunar soft landings (Luna 16, 17, 21, 23 and 24), lunar orbitters (Luna 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19 and 22) as well as unmanned missions which included samples of lunar material returned to Earth (Luna 16, 20 and 24). The Russians would redirect their attention to the Moon many years later with the Luna 25 mission which was destined to land at the lunar southern pole and near the crater Boguslawsky but crashed landed on Aug 19, 2023 after unexpectedly losing control while in orbit. Further amazing details regarding these missions are available here. Although less-well known, the Soviet ZOND project was also a successful undertaking to the Moon covering five missions between 1966 and 1970 (for additional details, click here).

The US would immediately follow with its own program including the Surveyor series (1966-1978) comprised of seven missions to the Moon whose primary purpose was to identify potential landing sites for the upcoming Apollo manned missions. Two of the seven Surveyor probes crashed and/or lost contact (Surveyor 2 and 4) whereas the remaining five managed to not only soft-land on the moon but take a large number of photos and perform soil analysis. Four of the five Surveyor probes that did land successfully did so in maria around the lunar equator. For additional interesting details regarding each of these missions, click here.

Along with the Surveyor series, the United States was active with its Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned programs with the latter captivating the world's attention in the late 1960's with the landing of Apollo 11 on the surface of the Moon with another five Apollo missions also leading to manned expeditions on the surface of the Moon during the early 1970's.

The Apollo series (1963-1972) comprised of a wide-variety of missions starting with the Apollo 1 (1967) catastrophe during a prelaunch fire, three test firings and unmanned missions (Apollo 4-6, 1967-68), two earth-orbitting (Apollo 7 and 9, 1968-1969) and two lunar-orbitting (Apollo 8 and 10, also 1968-1969) missions designed to test key hardware, a failed and nearly catastrophic mission (Apollo 13, 1970) which included a lunar flyby by necessity and, of course, the six manned landing missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 1969-1972) which included the retrieval of approximately 400 kg of lunar sample material by the twelve astronauts ever to set foot on the moon and whose cumulative EVA time exceeded 100 hours and ranged as far as 35 km from their landing site. For more intriguing details regarding each of these missions, click here and/or here.

Although not widely known, three additional missions (Apollo 18-20) were cancelled due to budgetary constraints. The proposed landing sites for these missions were Copernicus (Apollo 18), Hadley (Apollo 19) and Tycho (Apollo 20). Following the failure of the Apollo 13 mission, the original list of landing sites was reshuffled and where, for example, Apollo 14's landing site was changed from Littrow to Apollo 13's landing site of Fra Mauro. For additional details, click here.

Satellite missions to the Moon gained popularity during the 1990's and thereafter when countries such as China, India and Israel attempted to softland unmanned spacecraft of their own and which are documented immediately below and after the Apoollo (manned) missions.

Note: Ranger 9 was the final mission to the Moon during the Ranger program and whose mission was to take high-resolution images of the lunar surface using six video cameras beamed live back to Earth and whose purpose was to identify possible future landing sites for the manned Apollo missions. The spacecraft impacted the lunar surface as planned and into crater Alphonsus at a speed of 2,670 metres per second just north of the crater's central peak. Crater Alphonsus is 110 km wide amd 2.7 km deep and was considered as a possible landing site for the Apollo 20 mission. Crater Alphonsus is the middle crater in the impressive triplet sequence involving impact craters Ptolemeus, Alphonsus and Arzachel.