How many people have walked on the moon?

Although costly and fraught with risk, the Apollo program was a huge success for NASA, landing a total of 12 astronauts on the surface of the Moon.

Although many people have flown into space, very few have set foot on the Moon. Earth's natural satellite lies 370,000 kilometers (230,000 miles) away, which is relatively short in cosmic terms. The first two people to walk on the Moon were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission. They were followed by 10 other astronauts who walked on the lunar surface during various missions under the Apollo program, according to IFL Science .

Apollo 12

Just four months after Apollo 11, the next mission landed on the Moon in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) region. Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean landed on the lunar surface on November 19, 1969. The mission landed within range of the Surveyor 3 robotic spacecraft. Conrad and Bean returned Surveyor 3 components to Earth. Apollo 12 was also the first mission to use hammocks on another celestial body, as the two astronauts wanted to sleep more comfortably.

Astronauts successfully landed and walked on the Moon. (Photo: NASA).

Apollo 14

The Apollo 13 mission encountered serious problems on the way to the Moon and had to postpone its landing. The third human landing on Earth's natural satellite took place on February 5, 1971. Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and Edgar Mitchell became the fifth and sixth men to walk on the Moon. Apollo 14 also encountered some problems, but nothing too serious. The most famous event of the mission was Shepard hitting two golf balls. He was also the oldest person to set foot on the Moon (at age 47).

Apollo 15

David Scott and James Irwin landed on the Moon on July 20, 1971. NASA wanted to cut its budget, so there were many changes to the mission to make the most of its resources, including the first use of the Lunar Rover, the first vehicle humans had driven off Earth. Scott performed the famous Galileo experiment, which demonstrated that objects fall to the ground with the same acceleration regardless of mass. He did this by dropping a feather and a hammer.

The mission also filmed Alfred Worden, who did not land on the Moon but performed an extravehicular activity (EVA) to collect video from two lunar mapping cameras outside the module when the module was 200,000 miles (321,869 km) from Earth. This mission held the record for the largest number of people exposed to the vacuum of space at one time until the private spacewalk of the Polaris Dawn mission a month earlier.

Apollo 16

John Young and Charles Duke landed on the Moon on April 21, 1972. The pair spent nearly three days on the Moon, collecting material including Big Muley, the largest rock ever brought back from the moon by Apollo. The rock weighed 25 pounds. The lunar lander was named Orion after one of the brightest constellations in the sky. Pilot Thomas Mattingly instead chose the name Casper for the command and service module because "there was so much serious stuff on this flight, I decided to go with a funny name ," he said.

Apollo 17

Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were the last astronauts to walk on the Moon. They landed on December 11, 1972. Apollo 17 was the longest manned lunar landing mission, with astronauts traveling the furthest from the spacecraft, spending the most time on the Moon both inside and outside the spacecraft, and bringing back the largest sample of Moon rock to Earth. Schmitt was also the first person to develop an allergy to Moon dust.