Exploration of the Moon robot lunar rover to land on the Moon was the Soviet vessel Lunokhod 1 on November 17, 1970, as part of the Lunokhod programme. To date, the last human to stand on the Moon was Eugene Cernan, who as part of the mission Apollo 17, walked on the Moon in December 1972. "See also:" A full list of lunar Apollo astronauts. Moon rock samples were brought back to Earth by three Luna missions (Luna 16, 20, and 24) and the Apollo missions 11 through 17 (except Apollo 13, which aborted its planned lunar landing). From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s
Exploration of the Moon and avoid a space race Germany also announced in March 2007 that it would launch a national lunar orbiter, LEO in 2012. However the mission was cancelled due to budgetary constraints. In August 2007, NASA stated that all future missions and explorations of the Moon will be done entirely using the metric system. This was done to improve cooperation with space agencies of other countries which already use the metric system. The European Space Agency has also announced its intention to send a manned mission to the Moon, as part of the Aurora programme. In September 2010, the agency introduced