To date, only one country has succeeded in landing humans on the moon: the United States of America. As part of the Apollo space program, the United States has landed a total of 12 astronauts.
Soviet cosmonauts never orbited nor landed on the Moon. Details of both Soviet programs were kept secret until 1990 when the government allowed them to be published under the policy of glasnost.
Missions to the Moon have been conducted by the following nations and organisations (in chronological order): the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, the European Space Agency, China, India, Luxembourg, Israel, Italy, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates.
But what has become of the six American flags planted there by astronauts? Cameras attached to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have photographed five of the six flags left by astronauts from the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin collected the fragments during their historic moonwalk in July 1969. The Australian flag also travelled to the moon and back as part of the Apollo 11 mission.
The global commendations poured in as China's Chang'e-5 probe successfully planted a flag on the surface of the moon, becoming the first country since the 1972 US Apollo missions to achieve such a feat. Some media reports have termed China as being only the second nation to have its flag on the surface of the moon.
A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959.
To date, only one country has succeeded in landing humans on the moon: the United States of America. As part of the Apollo space program, the United States has landed a total of 12 astronauts.
China's crewed lunar landing plan is not formally approved by the Chinese government, but this is likely as its time frame is beyond the scope of the current national Five-year plan.
The Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 1969 was a huge feat of human endeavour, engineering and science. It was a moment that the world had been waiting for. Apollo 11 was followed by six further trips to the Moon, five of which landed successfully. 12 men walked on the lunar surface in total.
The demise was triggered when, in April 1970, an oxygen tank exploded two days after the launch of the Apollo 13 mission, threatening the lives of the astronauts on board. Missions after Apollo 17 were cancelled. But this was something of a pretext.
Images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera more than 40 years later proved Aldrin right. Unlike the other Apollo sites, there is no longer an American flag still standing at the place where humankind first made contact with the lunar surface 50 years ago on July 20.
What is this? While the United States and China are the only countries to have physically placed flags on the moon, a number of other nations have sent robotic probes to the lunar surface.
In addition to this, ISRO deployed the Moon Impact Probe, which landed on the moon's surface and collected data on the composition and density. Chandrayaan-1's success inspired ISRO to launch a number of other lunar missions, notably Chandrayaan-2, which launched in July 2019.
During spaceflight. As of March 2023, in-flight accidents have killed 15 astronauts and 4 cosmonauts in five separate incidents. Three of the flights had flown above the Kármán line (edge of space), and one was intended to do so. In each of these accidents the entire crew was killed.
On July 20th we'll celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first landing on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. But little will likely be said of another man who was meant to walk on the moon, Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
Statistics. As of May 2022, people from 44 countries have traveled in space. 622 people have reached Earth orbit. 628 have reached the altitude of space according to the FAI definition of the boundary of space, and 565 people have reached the altitude of space according to the American definition.
There have also been studies for a possible human mission to Mars, including a landing, but none have been attempted. Soviet Union's Mars 3, which landed in 1971, was the first successful Mars landing. As of 2022, the Soviet Union, United States, and China have conducted Mars landings successfully.
For many years, the Soviets led this 'space race', sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, to orbit the earth on April 13, 1961. But the US was the first country to send men to the moon. The iconic moon landing took place on 21 July 1969.
Most historians agree that the space race ended on 20 July 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon for the first time. As the climax of space history and exploration, the lunar landing led to a triumph for the US.
The signals continued for 21 days until the transmitter batteries ran out on 26 October 1957. On 4 January 1958, after three months in orbit, Sputnik 1 burned up while reentering Earth's atmosphere, having completed 1,440 orbits of the Earth, and travelling a distance of approximately 70,000,000 km (43,000,000 mi).
One of the most iconic images from the Apollo 11 mission is of Buzz Aldrin saluting the American flag on the surface of the Moon. The decision to plant the American flag on the Moon was made rather late in the lead-up to the mission.
China becomes second country in history to plant a flag on Moon, 50 years after US. December: Over 50 years after the United States planted the first human flag on the moon, China has become the second country to leave a flag on the lunar surface.