Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
When most of us think about the moon landing, we picture July 1969, Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface and saying those famous words. But what often gets overlooked is that Apollo wasn’t just one mission. NASA sent astronauts to the moon six times between 1969 and 1972. Six successful landings in only three years. That’s a pace almost impossible to imagine today, considering we haven’t been back in more than half a century.
Apollo 11 was the first, of course, but the rest of the program built on that achievement, expanding our scientific understanding of the moon. By the time Apollo ended, astronauts had not only walked on the lunar surface, but also driven across it, drilled into it, and brought back over 380 kilograms of rock and soil.
Apollo 12 came just four months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history. If Apollo 11 had been about proving it was possible, Apollo 12 was about showing precision. NASA wanted to prove they could land exactly where they aimed, not just somewhere nearby. Their target was the site of Surveyor 3, an unmanned probe that had landed on the moon back in 1967. But the mission almost ended before it began. Just 36 seconds after liftoff, lightning struck the Saturn 5 rocket — not once, but twice. The power surge knocked out the spacecraft’s fuel cells and guidance system. For a moment, it looked like the mission might be lost. But flight controllers restored the systems. From there, things went almost perfectly. The lunar module landed just 160 meters away from Surveyor 3, and astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean actually walked over to it. They even removed pieces of the old probe and brought them back to Earth, so scientists could study how years of exposure to lunar conditions had affected it.
When most of us think about the moon landing, we picture July 1969, Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface and saying those famous words. But what often gets overlooked is that Apollo wasn’t just one mission. NASA sent astronauts to the moon six times between 1969 and 1972. Six successful landings in only three years. That’s a pace almost impossible to imagine today, considering we haven’t been back in more than half a century.
Apollo 11 was the first, of course, but the rest of the program built on that achievement, expanding our scientific understanding of the moon. By the time Apollo ended, astronauts had not only walked on the lunar surface, but also driven across it, drilled into it, and brought back over 380 kilograms of rock and soil.
Apollo 12 came just four months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history. If Apollo 11 had been about proving it was possible, Apollo 12 was about showing precision. NASA wanted to prove they could land exactly where they aimed, not just somewhere nearby. Their target was the site of Surveyor 3, an unmanned probe that had landed on the moon back in 1967. But the mission almost ended before it began. Just 36 seconds after liftoff, lightning struck the Saturn 5 rocket — not once, but twice. The power surge knocked out the spacecraft’s fuel cells and guidance system. For a moment, it looked like the mission might be lost. But flight controllers restored the systems. From there, things went almost perfectly. The lunar module landed just 160 meters away from Surveyor 3, and astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean actually walked over to it. They even removed pieces of the old probe and brought them back to Earth, so scientists could study how years of exposure to lunar conditions had affected it.
