The Moon Missions

People have looked at the moon and written poems about it for thousands of years, but nobody expected to go there until 1961 when Yuri Gagarin made the first manned space flight.

Then the Americans decided to send a man to the moon. Apollo 11 took off on 16 July, 1969. The moon is 238,900 miles from Earth and the journey took four days. On 21 July, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The astronaut in the pictures of the first moon landing isn't Neil Armstrong. The photos show the second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin. That's because Armstrong took the photos!

There were six manned missions to the moon between 1969 and 1972, and 12 people have walked on the moon. No astronauts have been to the moon since 1972. We've learnt a lot about the moon because of these missions. For example, we know that there's no life there. Nothing has ever lived on the moon, but some scientists think that people will live on the moon one day. Life on the moon won't be easy. It will be a difficult and dangerous place to live.