Moon landing
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A moon landing is when a spacecraft successfully reaches and lands on the surface of the Moon. It matters because it represents a major achievement in space exploration and human technological capability.
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A still frame from a video transmission, taken moments before Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto the surface of the Moon, at 02:56 UTC on 21 July 1969. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watched this event, the largest television audience for a live broadcast at that time. A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a crewed or robotic spacecraft on the Moon. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959, and the first crewed mission to land on the Moon was Apollo 11 in 1969.
There were six crewed landings between 1969 and 1972 and numerous uncrewed landings. All crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the Apollo program, with the last departing in December 1972. After Luna 24 in 1976, there were no soft landings—landings without significant damage—on the Moon until Chang'e 3 in 2013. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until Chang'e 4 landed on the far side of the Moon in 2019.