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
Tourism on the Moon landing. PTScientists is a partner of For All Moonkind, Inc. and has pledged that its mission will honor heritage preservation and abide by all relevant guidelines. Space tourism companies which have announced they are pursuing lunar tourism include Space Adventures, Excalibur Almaz, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. The company Space Adventures has announced a planned mission, titled DSE-Alpha, to take two tourists within of the lunar surface, using a Soyuz spacecraft piloted by a professional cosmonaut. The trip would last around a week. In February 2017, SpaceX announced it had accepted deposits for a private week-long flyby mission to the Moon,