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From WinkyPedia, the free encyclopedia that tells you what you already knew
The first Moon landing took place on 20 July 1969, when the American Apollo 11 mission set its lunar module, Eagle, down on the Moon in an area known as the Sea of Tranquility. The Sea of Tranquility contains no sea and, during the landing, very little tranquility.[1]
Two of the three astronauts walked on the surface. The third stayed in orbit aboard the command module Columbia, making him the only member of the crew to travel all the way to the Moon and stay in the car.
Apollo 11 launched from Florida on 16 July 1969 on a Saturn V rocket about 110 metres tall, a height engineers felt was appropriate, given how far away the Moon is.[2] The trip to the Moon took about three days, which is roughly how long a parcel marked “next day” takes.
After splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on 24 July 1969, the crew completed a customs declaration in Honolulu, listing their cargo as Moon rock and Moon dust samples and their point of departure as the Moon.[3] Historians regard it as the only customs form in history on which every answer was surprising.
The crew then spent about three weeks in quarantine in case they had brought anything back from the Moon. They had: about 21.5 kilograms of it, all declared.
Six crewed Apollo missions landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The footprints they left are expected to last a very long time, as there is no wind on the Moon to blow them away and nobody there to tidy up.