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
12 to the Moon points out that the earth-saving eruption of Popocatepetl is "depicted by stock footage of solar prominences" that bear little resemblance to real volcanic eruptions. Modern critics are also bothered by the narrative development of the film. Westphal says that "Few films ... begin as soberly, and end as absurdly, as "12 to the Moon". The film's first thirty minutes promise an internationalized update of "Destination Moon" [1950], while later events rival a Flash Gordon serial". Senn agrees that the film is disappointing, noting that "What starts out as a fairly intelligent and progressive space-travel film ... quickly degenerates into a