Space Travel

Visiting Our Closest Neighbor

Rockets to the Moon

Apollo 11: Buzz Aldrin in spacesuit on lunar surface. Image: NASA

The Moon is our closest neighbor in space. Though little more than an airless rock, it remains a constant source of fascination to anyone who happens to look skyward.

For more than a century, humans have wondered about traveling to the Moon. There have now been dozens of missions to our neighbor. Let us hope that there will be countless more.

• Apollo 11—Humanity's first manned mission to the Moon.
• GRAIL twin spacecraft mission to map lunar gravity.