Twelve People Have Walked On The Moon And Who Goes Next
At 22:54 UTC on 14 December 1972, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt lifted off from the Moon’s Taurus-Littrow valley in Apollo 17’s lunar module, ending humanity’s last visit to its surface. Twelve people have walked on the Moon, all of them American men who flew on NASA’s Apollo missions between July 1969 and December 1972.
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| Representational Image Via: @konstructivizm on X |
The Twelve Moonwalkers
Six Apollo crews landed on the Moon, each putting two astronauts on the surface while a third stayed in lunar orbit.
| Mission | Moonwalkers | Landing date |
|---|---|---|
| Apollo 11 | Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin | 20 July 1969 |
| Apollo 12 | Pete Conrad, Alan Bean | 19 November 1969 |
| Apollo 14 | Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell | 5 February 1971 |
| Apollo 15 | David Scott, James Irwin | 30 July 1971 |
| Apollo 16 | John Young, Charles Duke | 21 April 1972 |
| Apollo 17 | Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt | 11 December 1972 |
Apollo 13, launched in April 1970, never landed. An oxygen tank exploded on the way to the Moon, and the crew looped around it and returned safely to Earth. Apollo 15 brought the first lunar roving vehicle. Schmitt, a geologist, was the only professional scientist among the twelve. Cernan was the last to climb back into the lander.
Four of the twelve are alive: Aldrin, Scott, Duke and Schmitt.
Why The Landings Stopped
Apollo’s purpose was political as much as scientific: to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. Once that was done, the cost became harder to justify. NASA cancelled the planned Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions and turned to the Skylab space station and the space shuttle, which could reach only low Earth orbit.
The Robots Went Back First
For decades, only machines returned. China’s Chang’e programme made the first landing on the Moon’s far side in January 2019 and, in June 2024, brought back the first samples from it.
On 23 August 2023, at 6:04 pm IST, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander, Vikram, touched down at about 69 degrees south, the first spacecraft to land near the lunar south pole. India became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States and China. Its rover, Pragyan, made the first direct detection of sulphur near the south pole.
Artemis II Returns Humans To The Moon’s Vicinity
On 1 April 2026, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It carried four astronauts in the Orion capsule they named Integrity: NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen. Koch became the first woman to travel around the Moon, Glover the first person of colour and Hansen the first person who is not a US citizen.
The crew did not land. They swung around the Moon, and on 6 April they reached 406,771 km from Earth, beating the distance record of 400,171 km set by Apollo 13 in 1970. They splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on 11 April.
Who Goes Next
NASA has recast its next mission. Artemis III, targeted for 2027, will stay in Earth orbit to test docking with the commercial lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. The first American landing since Apollo 17 is now planned for Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028.
China is preparing its own landing. The China Manned Space Agency said in February 2026 that it aims to send astronauts to the Moon by around 2030, using a new Long March 10 rocket, the Mengzhou crew spacecraft and the Lanyue lander. India’s space agency has stated a goal of landing an Indian on the Moon by 2040.
All three dates are targets, and spaceflight dates often slip. The thirteenth person on the Moon has not been named. Neither has the country whose flag they will carry.
Key facts
- Twelve people have walked on the Moon, all on NASA’s Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972.
- The last moonwalkers, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, left the surface on 14 December 1972.
- Artemis II flew four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026 without landing.
- NASA targets a crewed landing on Artemis IV in early 2028; China aims for around 2030; India aims for 2040.