List of Apollo astronauts
[1] No woman has been to the Moon, but a number of non-human animals have circled or orbited it, including two tortoises, several turtles, and five mice.
NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations during the Gemini and Apollo programs was Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, who was medically grounded in September 1962 due to a minor cardiac arrhythmia – paroxysmal atrial fibrillation.
[nb 1] Geologist Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt participated heavily in the geological training of the lunar landing astronauts, as well as assisting in the analysis of returned samples and the preparation of mission reports.
When program cutbacks canceled missions 18 through 20, NASA's lunar geological community insisted on having a geologist on the Moon, so Slayton reassigned Schmitt to Apollo 17.
Young and Cernan each set foot on it during their respective second lunar missions, while Lovell is the only person to have flown to the Moon twice without landing.
Because of Apollo 13's free-return trajectory, Lovell, Swigert and Haise flew higher above the Moon's 180° meridian (opposite Earth) than anyone else has flown (254 km/158 mi).
Armstrong descended the lunar module ladder and spoke his famous epigram, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.
[14] During these experiments, Armstrong and Aldrin received a phone call from President Nixon, congratulating them for the successful landing.
After setting up a couple of experiments with Armstrong, Aldrin went to work hammering a tube into the lunar surface to obtain a core sample.
[16] Aldrin's EVA ended when they loaded the lunar samples into the spacecraft and tossed out unneeded items, just before sealing the hatch.
[17] Soon after piloting the LM Falcon to a landing at Hadley Rille, Scott accomplished the only stand-up EVA through the lander's top hatch, using it as a high place from which to refine the geology traverses he and Irwin would undertake during the following days.
After the final traverse, back outside the LM, Scott performed a demonstration of Galileo's theory that all objects fall at the same rate in vacuum by dropping a hammer and a feather for the television camera.
[18] It was Irwin who, during the second EVA, first spotted the Genesis Rock and aided Scott in collecting this bit of the early lunar crust.
[19] A man of deep Christian religious faith, Irwin quoted from Psalms while on the lunar surface and later became an evangelist.
[20] In addition to the nine lunar missions, there were two crewed flights in the Apollo program that remained in Earth orbit to test fly the spacecraft.
Although Conrad, Bean, and Stafford commanded three of these four flights, the remaining crew members were rookies and thus had long missed the opportunity to fly a Moon mission.
