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The moon is our closest cosmic neighbor. And we’ve been exploring it surface since we developed the first telescope. The first tries of exploring the moon were not very productive. In that time, we were still unable to find out everything we wanted, but only about decade later, we had a human being walking on the moon. Luna 2 was the first object that landed on the moon’s surface in 1959. There were a few missions by NASA. They wanted to get as many pictures as possible from the flying object before it just smashes at the moon. These spacecrafts were named “Ranger”. Ranger 7 had really successful mission, because it collected more than 4,000 photos before it crashed. Around 1966-67 Russia had two successful missions. Luna 9 was the first vehicle that landed softly on the surface. Luna 10 which was launched about one year later, was the first object that orbited the moon. Probably one of the most important events that occurred on the moon was Apollo 11 mission. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, were making historical move. They were the first human beings who landed on the moon’s surface. In 1999 the lunar prospector orbited the moon in searching for ice at the lunar poles. It also explored the moon’s gravitational field. This mission was ended with smashing the craft into the moon on purpose. With smashing the craft, they wanted to find out if there was water on the moon. Nowadays, many countries are involved in researching the moon’s surface and the moon’s environment. This can actually bring a lot of goods for us, because one day we will maybe be able to use the moon as the first station in further research of the universe. The U.S. has probably one of the most ambitious plans, because they are planning to return the humans to the moon by the end of 2020.

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