[00:00.00]Many years have passed since the first spacecraft landed on the moon in 1966.
[00:10.19]From then until now, there have been many additional attempts with some succeeding and others failing.
[00:20.38]Here is a short history of some of these attempts.
[00:25.48]The Soviet Union's Luna 9 spacecraft was the first to land on the moon.
[00:32.97]It touched down on the lunar surface in 1966.
[00:38.54]The landing came after several other Soviet spacecraft either did not reach the moon or crashed on the surface.
[00:49.10]The American space agency NASA says Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to carry out a soft landing on the moon.
[01:00.77]It was also the first to send "photographic data" from the moon's surface to Earth.
[01:09.18]Luna 9's landing proved "the lunar surface could support the weight of a lander and that an object would not sink into a loose layer of dust as some models predicted," NASA said.
[01:27.55]In May 1966, the United States followed with its Surveyor 1 mission.
[01:36.19]NASA describes this effort as "the first of a series of seven robotic spacecraft sent to the moon to gather data in preparation for NASA's Apollo missions."
[01:50.87]The successful soft landing of Surveyor 1 "was one of the great successes of NASA's early lunar and interplanetary program."
[02:02.83]Both the U.S. and Soviet Union had other successful robotic landings.
[02:10.68]Next, the countries aimed to be the first to land humans on the moon.
[02:17.93]In 1969, NASA successfully landed Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
[02:29.69]The U.S. Apollo program sent 12 astronauts to explore the moon over six missions.
[02:38.12]Apollo 17 was the last in 1972.
[02:43.31]The U.S. is still the only country to land humans on the moon.
[02:49.40]NASA officials say the agency's Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface possibly by the end of 2026.
[03:02.46]In 2013, China became the third country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon.
[03:11.30]China landed an exploring vehicle, or rover named Yutu that year.
[03:18.59]China followed with the Yutu-2 rover in 2019, this time touching down on the moon's unexplored far side.
[03:30.34]In 2020, China successfully returned samples of rock and dirt collected by the rovers.
[03:39.08]The mission returned about 1.7 kilograms of lunar material collected from the near side of the moon.
[03:48.96]Then in 2024, another mission returned rock and soil samples from the less explored far side of the moon.
[03:59.26]China has said it aims to land its astronauts on the moon by 2030.
[04:06.58]In 2023, Russia tried its first moon landing in nearly 50 years.
[04:13.92]The Luna 25 spacecraft was attempting to land near the lunar south pole.
[04:21.45]But it is believed to have crash landed on the moon's surface.
[04:26.93]The country's last effort before that, Luna 24 in 1976, landed successfully and returned moon rocks to Earth.
[04:39.22]After its first lander crashed into the moon in 2019, India made its second attempt in 2023.
[04:49.82]The country successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the lunar surface.
[04:58.28]The mission made India the fourth nation to complete a moon landing.
[05:04.82]In January 2024, Japan became the fifth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon.
[05:14.51]But the SLIM spacecraft landed upside down.
[05:19.47]This caused some power and communication problems, but the lander was able to operate for a short time.
[05:29.84]I'm Bryan Lynn.
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Words in This Story
layer - n. an amount of a substance that covers a surface
mission - n. (space travel) the flight of a spacecraft to perform a certain task or job
sample - n. a small amount of something that gives you information about the thing it was taken from
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