Walaupun kejayaan-kejayaan yang dilakukan oleh Amerika Syarikat dan Kesatuan Soviet menjadi kebanggaan bagi negara mereka, Perlumbaan Angkasa akan terus berlanjutan sehingga manusia pertama berjalan di bulan. Sebelum kejadian ini berlaku, kapal angkasa tanpa penghuni mesti dahulunya menerokai bulan dengan mengambil gambar dan menunjukkan keupayaan mereka untuk mendarat dengan selamat di permukaannya.

Prob tanpa manusia

Berikutan kejayaan Soviet meletakkan satelit pertama ke dalam orbit, Amerika memusatkan usaha mereka untuk menghantar prob ke bulan. Program Pioneer merupakan percubaan pertama A.S. Program Luna Soviet mula beroperasi dengan pelancaran Luna 1 pada 4 Januari 1959. Tujuan program Surveyor robotik A.S adalah untuk mencari tapak pendaratan di bulan. Seterusnya, Apollo 8 melakukan pengorbitan bermanusia pertama di bulan pada 27 Disember 1968, melatakkan batu asas untuk menghantar manusia ke bulan.

Pendaratan manusia di bulan

Walaupun rakyat Soviet sering menewaskan rakyat Amerika dalam mendahului dalam kebanyakan Perlumbaan Angkasa, mereka gagal dalam menewaskan Program Apollo Amerika Syarikat untuk mendaratkan manusia di bulan.

Selepas kejayaan awal Soviet, terutama penerbangan Gagarin, Presiden Kennedy mencari projek rakyat Amerika yang boleh menarik imaginasi umum. Lyndon Johnson championed the Apollo Program, which would economically benefit most of the key states in the next election, particularly his state of Texas, home to NASA's base in Houston. Projek Apollo menyokong dwi-penggunaan teknologi dan dalam pandangan Johnson, ini memberi peluang kepada US untuk mendahului Soviet. Kennedy melihat Apollo sebagai fokus yang ideal bagi usaha rakyat Amerika ke angkasa. He set up funding, shielding space spending from the 1963 tax cut and diverting money from other NASA projects, to the dismay of NASA's leader, James E. Webb.

Kennedy had claimed during the 1960 election that the previous administration had allowed a "missile gap" to develop between the US and USSR, although intelligence failed to confirm this. In conversation with Webb, Kennedy said:

Everything we do ought to really be tied in to getting on to the moon ahead of the Russians... otherwise we shouldn't be spending that kind of money, because I'm not interested in space... The only justification (for the cost) is because we hope to beat the USSR to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.2.

Kennedy memerlukan mesej yang berbeza bagi mendapatkan sokongan awam. Beliau meminta Johnson untuk menyiasat sebarang kemungkinan manfaat teknologi dan saintifik misi ke bulan. Program itu perlu mematikan kritikan daripada ahli politik di sebelah kiri, yang mahukan lebih banyak wang untuk program sosial dan di sebelah kanan, yang cenderung kepada lebih banyak projek ketenteraan. By emphasizing the scientific payoff and playing on fears of Soviet space dominance, Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33 percent in 1963. After Johnson became President in 1963, his continuing support allowed the program to succeed, as Kennedy had originally hoped.

The USSR was more ambivalent about going to the moon. Soviet leader Khrushchev wanted neither "defeat" by another power, nor the expense of such a project. In October 1963 he said that the USSR was "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the moon", while adding that they had not dropped out of the race. A year passed before the USSR committed itself to a moon-landing attempt.

Soviet Soyuz rockets like the one pictured above became the first reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit.

Kennedy proposed joint programs, such as a moon landing by Soviet and American astronauts and improved weather-monitoring satellites. Khrushchev, sensing an attempt to steal superior Russian space technology, rejected these ideas. Korolev, the RSA's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz craft and the N-1 launcher rocket which had the capacity for a manned moon landing. Khrushchev directed Korolev's design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a manned cislunar flight in 1966. In 1964 the new Soviet leadership gave Korolev the backing for a moon landing effort and brought all manned projects under his direction. With Korolev's death and the failure of the first Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet moon landing program quickly unravelled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei Leonov on the moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and then cancellation.

Earthrise, Dec 22, 1968 (NASA)

Apollo 11 gets there first

While unmanned Soviet probes did reach the moon before any U.S. craft, American Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the lunar surface, after landing in July of 1969. Commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong received backup from command-module pilot Michael Collins and lunar-module pilot Buzz Aldrin in an event watched by over 500 million people around the world. Social commentators widely recognize the lunar landing as one of the defining moments of the 20th century, and Armstrong's words on his first touching the moon's surface became similarly memorable:

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Other aspects of the moon landing

Unlike other international rivalries, the Space Race has remained unaffected by the desire for territorial expansion. After its successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly disclaimed the right to ownership of any part of the Moon.

Some conspiracy theorists still insist that the lunar landing was a hoax. These Apollo moon landing hoax accusations flourish in part because, while many enthusiasts predicted that moon landings would become commonplace, except for the several ensuing Apollo landings in the next decade such predictions have not yet come to pass.