Moon by the Soviet Union's Luna 2, an unmanned spacecraft. The United States' NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned lunar missions to date, beginning with the first manned orbital mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six manned landings between 1969 and 1972, with the first being Apollo 11. These missions returned lunar rocks which have been used to develop a geological understanding of the Moon's origin, internal structure, and the Moon's later history. Since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Moon has been visited only by unmanned spacecraft. Both the Moon's natural prominence in the earthly sky and
Interplanetary mission of future spacecraft making transneptunian journeys to new planets, although beyond Neptune there is only known to be exoplanets. Journey's to exoplanets are usually covered under the topic of interstellar travel, although the possibility of a rogue planet closer to Earth but not orbiting star may put an exoplanet more in reach. Interplanetary mission An interplanetary mission is a voyage or trip through outer space involving more than one planet. As of 25 April 2018, there have been no manned interplanetary missions. So far, all manned missions have been in Earth's orbit or to its Moon. A large number of