Apollo program an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third US human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by the two-man Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo. Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their lunar module (LM) on July 20, 1969, and walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module (CSM), and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon,
Tank on the Moon feverish technological competition, popularly known as the space race, to be the first to land a human on the Moon. The United States won the race, but less is known about a "secret chapter" from the Cold War era. Overshadowed by the Apollo Moon landings and largely ignored in the West at the time, the Soviets were also exploring the Moon with a series of successful robotic Moon missions. The Soviets never sent humans to the Moon, but they successfully guided two freely-roving robots by remote control from the Earth. For 16 months between 1970 and 1973, these Lunokhods traveled