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
Woodpecker in the Moon the moon, but, two years later, hasn't returned to Earth. In the present day, at the Interplanetary Rocket Society, Professor P. Cosmo Clonk asks the other scientists if one of them will volunteer for the next manned mission to the moon. The scientists just look at each other until it boils down to Fido, the society's mascot, but Fido gulps and immediately pretends to have the measles. Professor Clonk tries to coax Fido to stop delaying the progress of science, but Fido, still refusing to go first tries pretending he isn't Fido and shows his master pictures of his family