Shoot for the Stars With This Moon Landing Quiz

Every Apollo mission — including those that never landed on the moon — had a lander with a specific name. The most recognizable is Apollo 11’s Eagle, thanks to the famous phrase, “The Eagle has landed.” Falcon was the name of Apollo 15’s lander, and Apollo 16’s Orion landed on the moon in April 1972.

Because of Apollo 11’s historic mission, an important memento hitched a ride to the lunar surface. A piece of wood and cloth from the original Wright Flyer, which famously flew for the first time in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, traveled to the lunar surface along with Neil Armstrong. The moment showcased just how far human flight had evolved in half a century.

Just 55 hours, 55 minutes, and 4 seconds into Apollo 13’s flight to the moon, Mission Control in Houston recorded a shift in its communications with the spacecraft. Moments later, command module pilot Jack Swigert radioed mission control and now-famously said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” (Commander James Lovell repeated the phrase a few moments later.) The oxygen tank ruptured, endangering the mission. Thankfully, Apollo 13 safely returned to Earth four days later.

Although NASA’s Apollo 11 was the apex of the space race, the Soviet Union achieved some significant firsts in lunar exploration thanks to its Luna program. The first photograph of the far side of the moon was taken by Luna 3 in 1959, Luna 9 made the first controlled landing on the moon in 1966, and Luna 16 pulled off the first robotic lunar sample return mission in 1970.

To date, only three countries have successfully landed manned or unmanned spacecraft on the moon — the United States, Russia, and China. In 1959, Russia (then the Soviet Union) reached the moon with an unmanned spacecraft. A decade later, the United States successfully landed the first manned spacecraft on the moon. With this landing, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two people to step foot on the moon.

After traveling 240,000 miles to the moon and back, the Apollo 11’s command module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969 — but the parades would have to wait. Because of NASA’s unfamiliarity with the moon’s ecosystem, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins went straight into quarantine to ensure they weren’t infected with “moon plague.” After 21 days, the celebrations commenced.

On July 31, 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin achieved a major milestone in human exploration: They drove on another world. Sitting behind the wheel of a lunar rover vehicle, or LRV, the two astronauts traversed 17 miles of lunar landscape over the course of three days. The rover was such a success that the Apollo 16 and 17 missions also featured their own LRVs.

Powered by five F-1 engines providing a total of 7.5 million pounds of thrust, the Saturn V is one of the most powerful rockets ever made. The rocket was used to propel the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11. Despite having the same name as the ringed planet, “Saturn” is actually a continuation of the U.S. military’s tradition of naming rockets after mythological figures.

Apollo 11’s launch on July 16, 1969, was a star-studded event. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who oversaw the Apollo program's early years, was in attendance, as were television host Johnny Carson and 67-year-old aviation explorer Charles Lindbergh. However, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, wife of former President John F. Kennedy, didn't make the trip.

The Apollo program put the first humans on the moon, arguably the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century. Only 12 people actually walked on the moon, with Captain Eugene Cernan being the last person to leave the lunar surface. Cernan, who had been a Gemini astronaut prior to being taken up in the Apollo program, was one of only three people to visit the moon twice.

Talk about out of this world: Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on February 6, 1971, right before he left the moon during the Apollo 14 mission. Shepard used a 6-iron and launched two golf balls over 200 meters. Good thing no one else was around, because on the moon no one can hear you scream "fore!"

Black + Decker was hired by NASA to create power tools that could be safely operated in the reduced gravity of outer space. By 1971, the B&D Moon Drill for astronauts and cordless tools for everyday consumers had debuted. Black + Decker expanded its lineup of cordless products before hitting on a winning combination with the DustBuster, a rechargeable, handheld vacuum that was an instant bestseller.

The Gemini program, which stretched across 10 missions between 1965 and 1966, prepped NASA for the moonshot Apollo missions. The program featured the first U.S. spacewalk (June 1965) and practice runs for docking two spacecraft in space. The name “Gemini” came from the program’s two-person capsule, which mimicked the “twins” constellation.

On Christmas Eve of 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts were broadcast reading Bible passages from space. The moment prompted Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) to begin compiling a list of people interested in moon travel. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be — the waiting list closed with 93,000 names in 1971 and the company shuttered in 1991, effectively ending the Pan Am moon vacation dream.

The Apollo astronauts trained in several places, but Iceland provided the best geological experience for their lunar mission. Scientists determined that Iceland's volcanic landscape was the most moonlike terrain on Earth, so in 1965, NASA sent the first group of Apollo astronauts to Húsavík. Two years later, a second crew arrived and spent 10 days collecting rocks and other geological samples.

Every Apollo mission launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on what’s known today as the state’s “space coast.” NASA launches missions from Florida because of its proximity to the equator and the assistance rockets receive from the Earth’s west-east spin. Any malfunctioning rocket would also splash down in the Atlantic instead of in overpopulated areas.

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong as the first man to walk on the moon, but not all know the location of his one small step. Tranquility Base on our moon's Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) served as the backdrop for the July 20, 1969 lunar mission. Tranquility Base also served as the site for two experiments, the Laser Ranging Retroreflector and the Passive Seismic Experiment.

You probably know Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but the third Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins, never quite became a household name. Collins took one for the team and stayed in the Command Module that orbited the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on its surface. NASA Astronaut Alan Shepard also walked on the moon, but not with the Apollo 11 crew.

The Apollo 11 mission launched on July 16, 1969, from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Florida, with one primary objective: to put a man on the moon. The astronauts aboard were also tasked with collecting lunar samples, conducting various experiments, and deploying a television camera. The astronauts safely descended to Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.

Rather than landing off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, like later shuttle missions, the Apollo 11 mission planned its descent for the largest target on the planet: the Pacific Ocean. On July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew successfully returned to Earth when their capsule splashed down some 900 miles southwest of Hawaii, about 12 nautical miles from the recovery ship.