Neil Armstrong was the first of twelve men to walk on the Moon.
Twelve astronauts have walked on the Moon. All manned lunar landings took place between July 1969 and December 1972. Six of the twelve drove Lunar Roving Vehicles on the Moon. The vehicles were battery-powered buggies that reached a maximum speed of 18.0 kilometres-per-hour (11.2 mph).
Manned lunar landings and walks on the surface of the moon were carried out by the North American Space Agency (NASA) as part of the Apollo program. The first man to walk on the Moon was Neil Armstrong on July 21, 1969. The last person to walk on the Moon was Harrison Schmitt on December 14, 1972.
The Apollo program featured six successful moon landings; Apollo 11 being the first, followed by Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. You might notice Apollo 13 is missing. Its mission was aborted following an explosion which crippled the spaceship and almost killed the crew. Apollo 13 was forced to orbit the Moon and return to Earth as soon as possible. In the process, Apollo 13 ended up 400,171 km (248,655 mi) from Earth, a spaceflight record marking the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth.
Why haven’t we returned to the moon?
To put it simply, manned lunar missions were very expensive. The final cost of the Apollo program was reported to the United States Congress in 1973 as costing $25.4 billion. The public had become less excited about moon landings and started to question whether the billions would be better spent on education, healthcare, and essential services. Besides, once the USA had the prestige of beating its rivals to the Moon, there was a lot less political and propaganda value in going there.
