First men on the Moon

Neil Alden Armstrong (b. Wapakoneta, Ohio, USA of Scottish [via Ireland] and German ancestry, on 5 August 1930), commander of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first human being to set foot on the Moon, on the Sea of Tranquillity, at 02:56 and 15 seconds GMT on 21 July 1969 (22:56 and 15 seconds EDT – Eastern Daylight Time – on 20 July 1969). He was followed out of the lunar module Eagle by Col. Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr, USAF (b. Montclair, New Jersey, USA of Swedish, Dutch and British ancestry, on 20 January 1930), while the command module Columbia piloted by Lt-Col. Michael Collins, USAF (b. Rome, Italy, of Irish and pre-Revolutionary American ancestry, on 31 October 1930) orbited above. Eagle landed at 20:17 and 42 seconds GMT on 20 July (16:17 and 42 seconds EDT) and lifted off at 17:54 GMT on 21 July (13:54 EDT), after a stay of 21 hours 36 minutes. Apollo 11 had blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, at 13:32 GMT on 16 July (09:32 EDT) and was a culmination of the US space programme, which at its peak employed 376,600 people and in 1966–67 attained a record budget of $5.9 billion.

The 12 people who have landed on the Moon, in order of stepping onto it, are as follows:

1. Neil Armstrong

2. Buzz Aldrin

3. Pete Conrad

4. Alan Bean

5. Alan Shepard

6. Edgar Mitchell

7. David Scott

8. James Irwin

9. John Young

10. Charles Duke

11. Eugene Cernan

12. Harrison Schmitt