What is Moon landing?
[[File:Moon Landing Sites.svg|thumb|right|250px|{{Center|This map shows the landing sites of the Surveyor, Apollo and Luna missions}}]] A '''Moon landing''' is the [[wikt:arrival|arrival]] of a [[spacecraft]] on the [[surface]] of the [[Moon]]. It is a follow up to [[Project Mercury]]. This includes both crewed and [[Unmanned aerial vehicle|uncrewed]] (robotic) [[wikt:missions|missions]]. The first [[wikt:man-made|man-made]] object to reach the surface of the Moon was the [[Soviet Union]]'s [[Luna 2]] mission, on 13 September 1959.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1959-014A | title = Luna 2 | publisher = NASA–NSSDC}}</ref> The United States' [[Apollo 11]] was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969.<ref>[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11_40th.html NASA Apollo 11 40th anniversary].</ref> There have been [[List of Apollo missions#Crewed|six missions with people onboard]] that landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. There were also numerous landings without people onboard, with no [[Soft landing (rocketry)|soft landings]] happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013. To date, the [[United States]] is the only country to have successfully landed humans on the Moon. The last mission was in December, 1972, and the last human to walk on the Moon was [[Gene Cernan]]. == References == {{reflist}}{{Sci-stub}} [[Category:Moon]] [[Category:Astronomy]]