Top 12 Men Who Have Walked On The Moon
From 1969 to 1972, twelve men stepped foot on Earth's natural satellite. This twelve men has been the first set of people to land and walked on the moon.
Top 12 men who walked on the moon
Content Summary
- Neil Armstrong
- Buzz Aldrin
- Alan Bean and Charles Conrad
- Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard
- James Irwin and David Scott
- Charles Duke and John Young
- Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan
1) Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong stepped into history on July 20, 1969, leaving the first human footprint on the surface of the moon.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong is famously quoted as saying after walking on the moon, but in interviews he claimed that he meant to say "one small step for a man."
Armstrong died in 2012 at age 82 following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.
2) Buzz Aldrin
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, stands next to the lunar module "Eagle" on July 20, 1969.
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Aldrin, now 89, was medically evacuated from the South Pole in December 2016 after suffering symptoms of altitude sickness, but quickly recovered.
3) Alan Bean and Charles Conrad
Apollo 12 Astronaut Alan L. Bean holds a container filled with lunar soil during a moonwalk with Charles Conrad, Jr., in November 1969.
Charles "Pete" Conrad, the third man to walk on the moon, poses at left in 1965 before his first space flight aboard Gemini 5.
Conrad died after a motorcycle accident in Ojai, California, in 1999. He was 69.
Bean resigned from NASA in June 1981 to devote his time to painting. He died on May 26, 2018, at the age of 86, after suddenly falling ill while travelling.
4) Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard
Edgar Mitchell, left, conducts a seismic experiment during the first Apollo 14 moonwalk with Alan Shepard on Feb. 5, 1971.
The photograph was captured by an automatic camera mounted on a vehicle the mission uses to haul equipment.
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The crew of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission, from left, Stuart Roosa, commander Alan Shepard and lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell. Roosa remained in orbit while the other two landed on the moon.
Mitchell died at 85, in Florida, in early 2016. After NASA, Mitchell devoted his life to exploring the mind, physics and unexplained phenomena such as psychics and aliens.
Shepard died in 1988. Before walking on the moon, Shepard became the first American in space with a suborbital flight in 1961.
5) James Irwin and David Scott
James Irwin, lunar module pilot, gives a military salute to David Scott, taking the picture, while standing beside the U.S. flag during the Apollo 15 mission on Aug. 1, 1971.
The lunar module Falcon stands at center. Hadley Delta in the background rises approximately some 13,000 feet above the plain.
James Irwin, left, and David Scott sample rocks in the Mojave Desert during a field trip where they used a lunar rover simulator to explore a lava flow at the base of the Sierra Nevadas in California on April 29, 1971.
Irwin resigned from NASA and the Air Force in July 1972 to form a religious organization, High Flight Foundation, in Colorado Springs. He died in 1991.
A personal watch that Scott wore while walking on the moon sold for a whopping $1.625 million at auction in 2015. He is only one of three astronauts who have flown both earth orbital and lunar Apollo missions. He is 87.
6) Charles Duke and John Young
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Charles Duke collects lunar samples during the first Apollo 16 moonwalk on April 21, 1972.
From left, Thomas Mattingly II, John Young, and Charles Duke. Mattingly remained in orbit while Young and Duke landed on the moon.
At 36, Duke was the youngest man to walk on the moon. He retired from NASA in 1975 to enter private business. He is 83.
John Young was the only agency astronaut to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs, and the first to fly into space six times. He was the ninth man to walk on the moon.
Young was the commander for the space shuttle fleet's inaugural flight in 1981. He died Jan. 5, 2018, at his home in Houston following complications from pneumonia. He was 87.
7) Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan
Harrison Schmitt stands next to a huge, split lunar boulder during the third Apollo 17 moonwalk with Eugene Cernan in December 1972.
Eugene Cernan, left, and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt pose aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft during the final lunar landing mission in December 1972.
Schmitt was the first person initially trained as a scientist to walk on the moon. Originally a geologist, he was selected by NASA in June 1965 along with a group of other scientist-astronauts – the first group not to be test pilots. He is 84.
