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Moon landing
Apollo 11 landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon on 20 July 1969; twelve people walked on it by 1972.
Open in the interactive tree →Apollo used one of the first computers built with integrated circuits to navigate, and the Saturn V remained the most powerful rocket flown for decades. The 382 kg of lunar samples gave the Moon's age of about 4.5 billion years and supported the giant-impact origin. After Apollo 17 (December 1972) no human went beyond low Earth orbit until Artemis II in 2026.
Prerequisites
- Programmable Computer1941Apollo's guidance computer flew the descent and landing
- Integrated Circuit1958-1959
- Kalman Filter1960Apollo navigation used Kalman filtering of its measurements
- Apollo Guidance Computer1961-1969The Apollo Guidance Computer flew the landing
- First human in space1961
Unlocks
- Space stations1971
- Space Shuttle1981
- Far-Side & Polar Moon Landings2019-2023
- Asteroid Sample Return2020–2023
- Chang'e-6 far-side samples2024
- Artemis II lunar flyby2026
More in Space & Astronomy · Atomic & Space Age
- First satellite (Sputnik)1957
- Apollo Guidance Computer1961-1969
- First human in space1961
- Pulsars1967
- Black Holes (Cygnus X-1)1971-72
- Space stations1971
- Deep-space probes (Voyager)1977
- Space Shuttle1981