We choose to go to the Moon a week after Kennedy's assassination. The idea of a joint Moon mission was abandoned after Kennedy's death, but the Apollo Project became a memorial to him. His goal was fulfilled in July 1969, with the successful Apollo 11 Moon landing. This accomplishment remains an enduring legacy of Kennedy's speech, but his deadline demanded a necessarily narrow focus, and there was no indication of what should be done next once it was achieved. Apollo did not usher in an era of lunar exploration, and no further missions were sent to the Moon after Apollo 17 in 1972. Subsequent planned Apollo missions
Moon landing around the Moon before returning safely to Earth. Apollo 10 then performed a full dress rehearsal of a manned Moon landing in May 1969. This mission orbited within altitude above the lunar surface, performing necessary low-altitude mapping of trajectory-altering mascons using a factory prototype lunar module that was too overweight to allow a successful landing. With the failure of the unmanned Soviet sample return Moon landing attempt Luna 15 in July 1969, the stage was set for Apollo 11. Plans for manned Moon exploration originated during the Eisenhower administration. In a series of mid-1950s articles in "Collier's" magazine, Wernher von