Apollo project

US space project to land a person on the Moon, achieved on 20 July 1969, when Neil Armstrong was the first to set foot there. He was accompanied on the Moon's surface by Buzz Aldrin; Michael Collins remained in the orbiting command module.

The programme was announced in 1961 by US president John F Kennedy. The world's most powerful rocket, Saturn V (see Saturn rocket), was built to launch the Apollo spacecraft, which carried three astronauts. When the spacecraft was in orbit around the Moon, two astronauts would descend to the surface in the lunar module to take samples of rock and soil and set up experiments that would send data back to Earth. After four preparatory flights, Apollo 11 made the first lunar landing. Five more crewed landings followed, the last in 1972. The total cost of the programme was over US$24 billion.