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Moon

Earth's only natural satellite

34 dated entries naming Moon, drawn from 23 separate years between 280 BCE and 2024 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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3rd century BC

  • 280 BCEAristarchus of Samos uses the size of the Earth's shadow on the Moon to estimate that the Moon's radius is one-third that of the Earth. He proposes, for the first time, a heliocentric view of the Solar System, but is ignored due to the lack of evidence of the Earth's motion.source

2nd century BC

  • 129 BCETotal solar eclipse, used by Hipparchus to estimate distance to the Moon.source

17th century

  • 1609August 15 (August 5 O.S.) – English astronomer Thomas Harriot becomes the first person to make a detailed drawing of the Moon, based on his observations through a telescope.source
  • 1620January 7 – Ben Jonson's play News from the New World Discovered in the Moon is given its first performance, a presentation to King James VI and I. In addition to dialogue about actual observations made by telescope of the Moon, the play includes a fanciful discussion of a lunar civilisation, featuring a dance by the "Volatees", the lunar race.source

20th century

  • 1930January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will be on January 1, 2257, at .source
  • 1930January 20 – Buzz Aldrin, American pilot, astronaut (Apollo 11), second person to set foot on the Moonsource
  • 1959January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the vicinity of Earth's Moon, where it was intended to crash-land, but instead becomes the first spacecraft to go into heliocentric orbit.source
  • 1959September 14 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 becomes the first human-made object to crash on the Moon.source
  • 1962April 26 – The U.S. Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the far side of the Moon without returning any scientific data.source
  • 1966February 3 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.source
  • 1966June 2 – Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.source
  • 1968December 24 – Apollo program: The crewed U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole, as well as having traveled further away from Earth than any people in history. Anders photographs Earthrise. The crew also give a reading from the Book of Genesis.source
  • 1969July 16 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins) lifts off from Cape Kennedy in Florida towards the first crewed landing on the Moon.source
  • 1969May 18 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 (Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford, John Young) is launched. It is to be a full rehearsal for the Moon landing, stopping 15 kilometers short of actually reaching the lunar surface.source
  • 1969May 22 – Apollo program: Apollo 10's lunar module flies to within 15,400 m of the Moon's surface.source
  • 1969May 26 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first crewed Moon landing.source
  • 1969November 14 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second crewed mission to the Moon.source
  • 1969November 19 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), becoming the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.source
  • 1970April 11 – Apollo program: Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched from the United States toward the Moon.source
  • 1972December 11 – Apollo 17 lands on the Moon.source
  • 1972December 7 – Apollo 17 (Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans, Harrison Schmitt), the last crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026, is launched to the Moon and The Blue Marble photograph of the Earth is taken. The mission also includes five mice.source
  • 1972February 21 – The Soviet uncrewed spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.source
  • 1998January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles.source
  • 1999July 31 – NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the lunar surface.source

21st century

  • 2004November 13 – The European Space Agency probe SMART-1 arrives at the Moon, becoming the first European satellite to fly to the Moon and orbit it.source
  • 2007September 14 – The SELENE spacecraft launches, with its objective being to study the Moon.source
  • 2009November 13 – Having analyzed the data from the LCROSS lunar impact, NASA announces that it has found a "significant" quantity of water in the Moon's Cabeus crater.source
  • 2013December 14 – Chinese uncrewed spacecraft Chang'e 3, carrying the Yutu rover, becomes the first spacecraft to "soft"-land on the Moon since 1976 and the third ever robotic rover to do so.source
  • 2019February 21 – SpaceIL launches the Beresheet probe, the world's first privately financed mission to the Moon.source
  • 2020April 30 – NASA officially selects SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to build its next-generation lunar lander to carry American astronauts to the Moon by 2024.source
  • 2020October 26 – NASA confirms the existence of molecular water on the sunlit side of the Moon, near Clavius crater, at concentrations of up to 412 parts per million.source
  • 2022November 16 – NASA launches Artemis 1, the first uncrewed mission of its Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit. The onboard Orion capsule orbits the Moon before returning to Earth, as a demonstration of planned human missions.source
  • 2023August 23 – India's Chandrayaan-3 becomes the first spacecraft to land near the south pole of the Moon, carrying a lunar lander named Vikram and a lunar rover named Pragyan.source
  • 2024January 19 – Japan becomes the 5th country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, with its SLIM mission.source

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