To the Moon and Back: a Complete History of Lunar Exploration

On the night of July 20, 1969, a human being stood on the surface of another world for the first time. Neil Armstrong's boot prints in the lunar dust remain there today, undisturbed. The Moon has no wind, no rain, nothing to erase them. In a sense they will outlast every monument humanity has ever built.

But the story of how we got there, and where we are going next, is far longer, stranger, and more contested than the triumphant Apollo narrative usually suggests. It is a story of Cold War rivalry, secret failures, extraordinary engineering, and a new generation of explorers from nations that did not even have space programs when Armstrong landed. It is also a story that is still being written.

The Space Race Begins (1957 to 1961)

The modern era of space exploration began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. The shock to American confidence was profound. If the Soviets could put a satellite in orbit, the reasoning went, they could put a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth. The Space Race had begun.

Both superpowers quickly turned their eyes to the Moon. The Soviets struck first. In January 1959, Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to escape Earth's gravity, though it missed the Moon and drifted into solar orbit. In September 1959, Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to reach the lunar surface, impacting near the Sea of Serenity. Shortly after, Luna 3 looped around the Moon and sent back humanity's first photographs of the far side, revealing a landscape startlingly different from the near side, with fewer dark plains, more craters, and more rugged terrain.

The United States struggled early. The Ranger program, designed to crash cameras onto the Moon while transmitting close-up photos, suffered six consecutive failures before Rangers 7, 8, and 9 succeeded in 1964 and 1965. The Surveyor program then achieved soft landings and confirmed the lunar surface was solid enough to support a human being. The Lunar Orbiter program mapped 99 percent of the lunar surface and identified potential Apollo landing sites.

The Soviet Crewed Lunar Program: the Secret Race