Apollo Missions Table
| Mission | Launch | Crew | Milestone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo 1 | 1967-01-27 | Grissom, White, Chaffee | launch-pad fire; crew lost, program redesigned |
| Apollo 4 | 1967-11-09 | uncrewed | first flight of the Saturn V |
| Apollo 6 | 1968-04-04 | uncrewed | second Saturn V test flight |
| Apollo 7 | 1968-10-11 | Schirra, Eisele, Cunningham | first crewed Command/Service Module flight |
| Apollo 8 | 1968-12-21 | Borman, Lovell, Anders | first crewed lunar orbit; Earthrise photograph |
| Apollo 9 | 1969-03-03 | McDivitt, Scott, Schweickart | first crewed Lunar Module test, Earth orbit |
| Apollo 10 | 1969-05-18 | Stafford, Young, Cernan | full dress rehearsal to 15 km above the Moon |
| Apollo 11 | 1969-07-16 | Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin | first crewed landing - July 20, 1969 |
| Apollo 12 | 1969-11-14 | Conrad, Gordon, Bean | precision landing beside Surveyor 3 |
| Apollo 13 | 1970-04-11 | Lovell, Swigert, Haise | service-module explosion; free-return safe return |
| Apollo 14 | 1971-01-31 | Shepard, Roosa, Mitchell | landing at Fra Mauro (13’s target) |
| Apollo 15 | 1971-07-26 | Scott, Worden, Irwin | first mission with the Lunar Roving Vehicle |
| Apollo 16 | 1972-04-16 | Young, Mattingly, Duke | Descartes Highlands; first telescopic observations |
| Apollo 17 | 1972-12-07 | Cernan, Evans, Schmitt | final landing; geologist Schmitt, the only scientist |
NASA's Apollo Program ran from 1962 to 1972 and flew fourteen numbered missions - eleven crewed, six of them landing on the Moon. The table is that arc in fourteen rows: two Saturn V test flights without crews, a chain of increasingly bold rehearsals, six landings between July 1969 and December 1972, and the two flights (1 and 13) that never reached their destinations but defined the program anyway.
The mission numbers hide a cull: Apollo 2 and 3 never flew (their designations went unused after early program reshuffles), and the flight order is not the number order - Apollo 4 (November 1967) flew before Apollo 6, and both preceded any crew. Apollo 8 is the audacious pivot: scheduled as an Earth-orbit test, it was thrown at the Moon in December 1968 after a lunar module slipped its schedule, and Borman, Lovell and Anders spent Christmas Eve orbiting the Moon and taking the Earthrise photograph.
The crew column reads as a who's-who that doubles as a survival ledger: Grissom, White and Chaffee died in Apollo 1's launch-pad fire and never flew; Lovell flew twice (8 and 13) and never landed; Cernan also flew twice (10 and 17) and was the last person to leave footprints. Six landing crews made it to the surface; three command-module pilots (Collins, Gordon, Evans) each waited alone in lunar orbit - the loneliest humans up to that date.
How to use
- Trace the program's ladder by milestone: Saturn V checkout (4, 6) → crewed Earth orbit (7) → lunar orbit (8) → lunar module test (9) → dress rehearsal (10) → landing (11). Every row exists because the row above it worked.
- Read the landing block as one campaign: 11 proved it, 12 proved precision, 13 proved survival, 14-17 proved science - each later mission carried more instruments, longer stays, and from Apollo 15, a roving vehicle that tripled the explored ground.
- Answer the famous questions from the rows: the fire was Apollo 1 (January 27, 1967); the explosion was Apollo 13 (April 13, 1970, en route); the first landing was July 20, 1969; the last crew to walk the Moon was Apollo 17 (December 1972) - and no human has been back since.
- Note who is missing: no women flew in Apollo (astronaut corps policy of the era), no Apollo 2 or 3 exists, and Apollo 18-20 were funded then cancelled - their hardware became Skylab and the ASTP rendezvous instead.
Frequently asked questions
How many Apollo missions landed on the Moon?
Six: Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, between July 1969 and December 1972. Apollo 13 was targeted for a landing but its service module exploded en route - the crew swung around the Moon on a free-return trajectory and returned safely without touching down.
Why did Apollo 1 never fly?
Apollo 1 never launched: Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died on January 27, 1967, when a fire broke out inside the sealed command module during a launch-pad test. The investigation found the pure-oxygen atmosphere, flammable materials and a hatch that opened inward; the redesign that followed is why every subsequent crew came home.
What went wrong on Apollo 13?
An oxygen tank in the service module ruptured two days out - 'Houston, we've had a problem' - knocking out power and the landing mission. The three astronauts moved into the lunar module as a lifeboat, swung around the Moon on a free-return path, and splashed down safely on April 17, 1970. NASA later called it 'a successful failure.'
Why did the Apollo program stop?
Budget and politics: Apollo's goal was achieved, the Vietnam War was consuming the budget, and Nixon cut Apollos 18-20 in 1970-72. Apollo 17 (December 1972) was the last - its commander Gene Cernan's final words on the surface ('we shall return') remain unfulfilled for over five decades; Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz mission reused the cancelled hardware.