Moon Landing

By Eduardo Vega

MOON LANDINGSMoon Landings are when a

spacecraft, manned or unmanned,

lands on the surface of the moon.

The first human-made object to

ever land on the moon was the

Soviet Union’s Luna 2 mission on

September 13, 1959. On the other

hand, the United Sate’s Apollo 11

mission was the first manned

mission to land on the moon in

1969. There has been a total of 12

moon landings though out history,

with 3 astronauts aboard the

mission.

Scientific Background

Landing on the Moon was a very hard to reach goal, many things had to go be overcome before even considering landing on the Moon, such as leaving the Earth in the first place. They had to leave the gravity well of the Earth, and the only answer was with a rocket as only a rocket could keep increasing its speed outside the Earths atmosphere.

The landing was also very difficult, the spacecraft had to decelerate enough to be able to land safely. There is multiple methods to decelerate a spacecraft enough to land safely, such as parachutes and balloons.

Political History

After World War 2, the United States and the Soviet Union started what came to be known as the Cold war. The Cold War was a race in which each nation was trying to be the most advance at everything out of all nations. Out of this, the space race came, and the race to see who could leave the Earth first then went to see who could make it to the Moon first.

The Soviet Union was able to land something first but the United States was able to land a manned spacecraft first, putting them on top of the space race. This in a way made the United Sates look as the bigger and more powerful nation, and at that time that was very important.

Landing HistoryHard Landings

There has been more attempts to land on the surface of the Moon by unmanned spacecraft than any other kind, this is due to the high risk of failure the missions have to go through. There has been a total of 18 United States unmanned spacecraft sent to the Moon and a total of 22 from the Soviet Union. Out of all those missions, a total of seven have succeeded in their mission of landing, 3 from the united States and 4 from the Soviet Union.

Soft LandingsSoft landings are harder to pull off so unlike hard landings, there hasn’t been very many attempted by any nation. The United States has attempted 7 soft landings while the Soviet Union has attempted 14 of them and successfully returned lunar dust back to Earth.

The difference between soft landings and hard landings is that soft landings are meant to land and have something usually deployed while hand landings crash upon landing.