Moon landing the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. After the unsuccessful attempt by the Luna 1 to land on the Moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard (unpowered) Moon landing later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4. Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976. In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first
Don Moon (educator) Argonne National Laboratory from 1959 to 1964. He subsequently completed a Master of Divinity at Nashotah House, an Episcopalian seminary, in 1965. From 1966 to 1967 Moon taught at Sauk Valley Community College in Dixon, Illinois. In 1967 Moon joined the natural sciences faculty of Shimer College in nearby Mount Carroll, Illinois. While an instructor, he held administrative positions including Chairman of the Natural Sciences Program, Director of the Oxford Program, Dean of Students and Dean of Faculty. After the attempted closure of the college by the Board of Trustees in 1973, Moon became one of a small group of