OUR MISSIONS TO THE MOON

Since the dawn of the Space Age, more than a hundred spacecraft have left Earth en route to the Moon. Not all of them made it, especially in the early years, but the ones that did embody some of the most amazing feats of human ingenuity ever seen.

The story of lunar exploration splits into two distinct phases. The first, lasting from the late 1950s to mid-1970s, was dominated by the rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union, known as the Space Race. With a quickfire string of firsts from both nations, this race to the Moon had an undeniably political dimension to it, but it yielded scientific rewards, too. The Apollo and Luna missions told scientists more about our nearest neighbour in space than we ever knew before, blazing