Apollo 11 Mission Overview
Apollo 11 was the historic United States spaceflight that achieved the first crewed lunar landing, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. Launched as part of NASA's Apollo program during the Cold War space race against the Soviet Union, it marked a pinnacle of human exploration and engineering, watched live by an estimated 650 million people worldwide.