All 12 Men Who Have Walked on the Moon

Fifty-three years have passed since the last human being stood on the Moon. The total membership of that club – every person in history who has walked on another world – is twelve. Twelve men. Six missions. All of it packed into a single 41-month window between July 1969 and December 1972, then nothing. Not a footprint since. (Before any of them launched, animals were sent to space first to prove humans could survive the trip.)

The Apollo program moved with a speed that still feels almost impossible. Less than three years elapsed between Neil Armstrong stepping off the Eagle’s ladder and Gene Cernan climbing back up it for the last time. In that window, twelve men from a single country spent a combined total of roughly 80 hours on the surface of the Moon, drove 90 kilometers of lunar terrain in electric rovers, brought home 842 pounds of rock, and fundamentally changed what it meant to be human. These are their stories.

Neil Alden Armstrong

Before he descended the ladder on July 20, 1969 – before he said a single word – Neil Armstrong went off-script. During the first and only moonwalk of Apollo 11, he made an unauthorized solo detour to the rim of Little West Crater, roughly 60 meters east of the Eagle, ranging up to 300 feet from the lander to photograph the terrain. Mission controllers hadn’t planned for it. Armstrong went anyway.

He spent approximately 2 hours and 14 minutes on the surface, with the combined Apollo 11 EVA (hatch open time) running 2 hours, 31 minutes, and 40 seconds total. The landing site was the Sea of Tranquility – a flat basaltic plain chosen precisely because it wasn’t interesting, to minimize risk. Armstrong and Aldrin collected 47.5 pounds of samples and deployed a seismic experiment, a laser reflector, and a solar wind composition experiment before climbing back in.

After Apollo, Armstrong wanted nothing more than to disappear. He became a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, avoided autographs, turned down almost every interview, and lived quietly on a farm in Ohio. He served on the commission that investigated the Challenger disaster. He died on August 25, 2012, from complications following bypass surgery, aged 82 – having spent the last four decades of his life simply refusing to be famous.

Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr.

While Neil Armstrong was still the first human off the ladder, Buzz Aldrin did something no human has done before or since: he took communion on the Moon. Before descending to the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, Aldrin – a Presbyterian elder – privately consumed bread and wine from a small communion kit he’d brought from his church in Houston. He read silently from the Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 5. NASA had recently been sued over astronauts reading from Genesis on Apollo 8, so Aldrin kept the ceremony to himself, broadcasting only that he wished to “give thanks in his own individual way.” The world didn’t fully learn what he’d done until years later.

Aldrin spent approximately 1 hour and 33 minutes on the lunar surface – less than Armstrong, who stayed outside 41 minutes longer after Aldrin re-entered the LM. He described the view of the lunar landscape as “magnificent desolation,” a phrase that stuck.

The years after Apollo were hard. Aldrin struggled with depression and alcoholism, laying it all out in his 1973 memoir Return to Earth with a candor unusual for astronauts of his era. He recovered, found his footing, and became one of the most publicly tireless advocates for human missions to Mars. At 93, he remains alive and loudly opinionated about the future of space exploration.

Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr.

Pete Conrad won a bet by walking on the Moon. A journalist had wagered that NASA scripted its astronauts’ every word – that whatever Conrad said first on the lunar surface would have been pre-approved and carefully crafted. Conrad accepted the wager and planned his response accordingly. When he stepped off the ladder on November 19, 1969, and his boots hit the Ocean of Storms, he shouted: “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!” He won the bet.

Conrad and lunar module pilot Alan Bean conducted two EVAs totaling approximately 7 hours and 45 minutes. Their landing was a precision masterpiece: they touched down just 538 feet from the Surveyor 3 robotic spacecraft that had been sitting on the lunar surface since April 1967. Conrad walked over to it and retrieved pieces for analysis – the first time humans had retrieved hardware from a spacecraft that had previously landed on another world.

Conrad commanded the first Skylab crew in 1973 and performed emergency repairs that saved the station. He left NASA for private industry and died on July 8, 1999, at 69, from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in Ojai, California. He was the kind of astronaut who made everything look like fun, and then went out the same way.

Alan LaVern Bean

Alan Bean destroyed the Moon landing’s live television coverage. Within minutes of stepping onto the lunar surface on November 19, 1969, he accidentally aimed the Apollo 12 color TV camera directly at the Sun. The vidicon tube burned out immediately. Permanently. The world lost all visual feed of the second lunar landing – no live images, no footage – because of that one moment. Bean later said he was simply moving it to a better position.

He and Pete Conrad spent approximately 7 hours and 45 minutes across two EVAs exploring the Ocean of Storms, recovering Surveyor 3 components, and deploying science experiments. Bean was the fourth human being to walk on the Moon and, at the time, had no particular expectation that the moment would define the rest of his life.

It did. In June 1981, after 18 years as an astronaut, Bean resigned from NASA to become a painter. He spent the remaining decades of his life creating artwork about the Apollo lunar experience – and embedding fragments of his actual spacesuit, along with lunar dust from his boots, into the paint on the canvas. He was the only person who walked on the Moon to make it the subject of their art. He died on May 26, 2018, aged 86. His paintings hang in museums. The Moon is in them.

Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr.

Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the Moon. He did it one-handed – a 6-iron clubhead attached to a sample-collection handle, swung in a pressurized spacesuit with restricted shoulder movement – but he hit them. He claimed one went “miles and miles and miles.” It probably went about 200 yards. No one could tell him otherwise.

Shepard, 47 years old at the time of the mission, was the oldest person ever to walk on the Moon – a record that still stands. He had been grounded from spaceflight for nine years because of Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear disorder that caused debilitating dizziness. A surgical procedure finally corrected it. He lobbied hard to command Apollo 14, trained intensively, and landed in the Fra Mauro highlands on February 5, 1971, at the site originally targeted for the ill-fated Apollo 13. Over two EVAs, Shepard and Edgar Mitchell logged 9 hours and 17 minutes on the surface.

After Apollo, Shepard returned to his role as Chief of the Astronaut Office and retired from NASA and the Navy in 1974. He founded a beer distributorship in Houston, served on corporate boards, and built a quiet and prosperous civilian life. He died of leukemia on July 21, 1998, aged 74 – two weeks after the death of his wife of 53 years, Louise, who outlived him by only a few weeks herself.

Edgar Dean Mitchell

On the way home from the Moon, Edgar Mitchell ran a secret experiment that NASA had no idea about. During the return flight to Earth, Mitchell attempted to transmit mental images of Zener card symbols – the standard tools of ESP research – telepathically to four recipients on Earth. He believed he got statistically significant results. The experiment was entirely unauthorized. NASA didn’t find out until after the mission. Mitchell published it anyway.

Mitchell spent 9 hours and 17 minutes on the lunar surface across two EVAs at Fra Mauro alongside Alan Shepard. But what shifted him permanently wasn’t the geology – it was the view. Returning from the Moon, looking out at the star field and the blue marble of Earth, Mitchell experienced what he later described as a sudden, overwhelming sense of interconnectedness. He called it “an instant global consciousness.” It was the kind of moment that redirects a life.

He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in 1973 to study consciousness, parapsychology, and the overlap between science and mysticism. He spent the rest of his career as one of the most genuinely unusual post-Apollo figures – a test pilot and MIT-trained scientist who also believed passionately in the possibility of extrasensory perception. He died on February 4, 2016, aged 85 – the eve of the 45th anniversary of his lunar landing.

David Randolph Scott

On the third day of Apollo 15’s surface operations, David Scott dropped a geological hammer and a falcon feather from shoulder height at the same time, on camera, and filmed them hitting the Moon simultaneously. It was Galileo’s 1589 experiment – the one that proved all objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass, air resistance being the variable – performed live, on the Moon, for a global television audience. The hammer and the feather hit the regolith together. The point was proven again, 382 years later, on another world.

Scott commanded Apollo 15, landing at Hadley-Apennine on July 31, 1971 – the most geologically complex landing site of the entire program, set against the 15,000-foot Apennine Mountains beside the mile-wide Hadley Rille. He and James Irwin conducted four EVAs totaling 19 hours, including a 33-minute standup EVA through the overhead hatch that Scott performed alone. They drove the first lunar rover, covering miles of terrain and collecting the “Genesis Rock” – a 4.1-billion-year-old chunk of the Moon’s original crust – from a small pedestal of soil as if it had been left there to be found.

Scott left NASA in 1977. In the 1990s, he was caught up in a scandal involving the unauthorized sale of commemorative postal covers that had been hand-cancelled on the Moon, leading to his resignation from NASA consulting roles. He later served as a consultant on HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon and has remained active in aerospace circles.

James Benson Irwin

James Irwin had a heart attack on the Moon. Not a full cardiac event – but cardiac arrhythmias serious enough that flight surgeons on the ground monitored his telemetry with alarm during the third EVA at Hadley-Apennine. NASA didn’t disclose the full extent of the irregularities until after the mission. Irwin himself didn’t know how serious they had been until he reviewed the medical data. He was 41 years old and in peak physical condition. The Moon had other ideas.

Irwin spent approximately 18 hours and 37 minutes on the lunar surface across three EVAs alongside David Scott, operating from July 31 to August 2, 1971. During that time, they discovered the Genesis Rock – a fragment of the Moon’s primordial crust, 4.1 billion years old, resting on a little pedestal of soil as though someone had set it there. The discovery was the geological highlight of the entire Apollo program.

The mission transformed Irwin spiritually. He left NASA the following year and founded the High Flight Foundation, a Christian ministry organization. He led multiple expeditions to Mount Ararat in Turkey searching for Noah’s Ark. None found anything. He died on August 8, 1991, at 61, from a heart attack – the first moonwalker to die, the cardiac thread following him all the way to the end.

John Watts Young

John Young flew to the Moon, commanded a Space Shuttle, and served NASA for 42 years – but what people remember most is the orange juice. During a rest period on the lunar surface in April 1972, Young’s open microphone caught him complaining candidly about the intestinal side effects of the potassium-loaded orange juice NASA had been feeding the crew. The comment was broadcast. NASA was not amused. Young was unrepentant.

Young commanded Apollo 16 with lunar module pilot Charles Duke, landing at the Descartes Highlands on April 21, 1972 – a site chosen because scientists believed the rugged terrain would yield volcanic rocks. Every sample recovered turned out to be impact-related. The volcanic theory was wrong. Young deployed the first astronomical telescope ever operated on the Moon: a far-ultraviolet camera that captured the first UV images of Earth and stars from the lunar surface, unobstructed by atmosphere. He and Duke logged approximately 20 hours and 14 minutes across three EVAs.

The Apollo 16 moonwalk was the middle chapter of a career that defies summarizing. Young had already orbited the Moon on Apollo 10. In 1981, he commanded Space Shuttle Columbia’s maiden flight, STS-1 – the only time in history that a first crewed test flight of a new spacecraft was flown by someone who had already walked on the Moon. He flew again on STS-9 in 1983. He served as Chief of the Astronaut Office. He retired from NASA on December 31, 2004, after 42 years. He died on January 5, 2018, aged 87.

Charles Moss Duke Jr.

A photograph of Charles Duke’s family is sitting on the Moon right now. During the third EVA at the Descartes Highlands in April 1972, Duke set down a laminated photograph of himself, his wife Dorothy, and their two sons, Charles and Tom. On the back he had written: “This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972.” He took a picture of it and left it there. The family portrait has been on the lunar surface, slowly fading in cosmic radiation, for over fifty years.

Duke was 36 years, 201 days old when he stepped onto the Moon – the youngest person in history to do so, a record no one has yet broken. He and John Young logged approximately 20 hours and 14 minutes across three EVAs, driving the rover to the rim of North Ray Crater – the largest crater visited on any Apollo mission – and collecting samples that overturned the geological predictions for the Descartes region.

Duke also holds a different distinction: he was the CAPCOM – the astronaut’s voice from Mission Control – during Apollo 11’s landing. His is the voice that told Armstrong and Aldrin “You’re go for landing” through the tense seconds before touchdown. He witnessed the first lunar landing from the ground, then went back three years later to do it himself. He became a born-again Christian in 1978 and has spent much of his life since as a lay speaker and author.

Eugene Andrew Cernan

Before he climbed back up the ladder for the last time, Gene Cernan knelt in the lunar dust and scratched his daughter’s initials into the soil with his finger. Tracy’s initials – TDC – are still there. No wind has erased them. No rover has driven over them. They sit in the regolith at Taurus-Littrow exactly where he left them on December 14, 1972, the last marks made by the last human being to stand on the Moon.

Cernan commanded Apollo 17, the final Apollo lunar landing mission, touching down on December 11, 1972. He and geologist Harrison Schmitt conducted three EVAs totaling 22 hours and 6 minutes – the longest total lunar surface EVA time in the history of spaceflight. They drove the rover across 35 kilometers of valley floor, climbed into mountain foothills, discovered orange volcanic glass, and collected 243 pounds of samples. The mission was the most scientifically productive of the entire program.

Cernan retired from the Navy and NASA in 1976 and went into private business, eventually becoming a television commentator for early Space Shuttle missions. He spent the rest of his life insisting that he should not be the last. He wrote The Last Man on the Moon, watched the documentary film made about him, and died on January 16, 2017, aged 82 – still the last.

Harrison Hagan “Jack” Schmitt

Jack Schmitt spotted something orange and the room at Mission Control went quiet. During the second EVA at Taurus-Littrow on December 12, 1972, Schmitt – the only professionally trained geologist ever to walk on the Moon – noticed a patch of vivid orange soil near the rim of Shorty Crater. Initial speculation ran to water or recent volcanic activity. Analysis back on Earth told a different story: the orange was volcanic glass beads, formed by ancient fire-fountain eruptions approximately 3.6 billion years ago. Not recent. But scientifically significant. And beautiful.

Schmitt spent 22 hours and 6 minutes on the lunar surface across three EVAs alongside Gene Cernan, mapping, sampling, and doing field geology with a rigor that no other moonwalker could match. He had a PhD in geology from Harvard and had trained the other Apollo astronauts in field geology techniques. He was, in the most literal sense, the right person to be there.

What came after was not geology. Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate from New Mexico as a Republican in 1976, serving a single term before losing his re-election bid in 1982. He returned to science, working as a consultant and academic, and has advised NASA on the Artemis lunar program. He is, as of 2026, the last surviving human being to have walked on the Moon who is still formally engaged with returning to it – a geologist who knows exactly what’s up there and exactly why it matters.

Fifty-three years ago, Gene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface, closed the hatch behind him, and became the last human being to leave another world. Tracy’s initials are still in the dust. The family photo is still fading. The falcon feather is still wherever it landed. Every trace of human presence on the Moon has been sitting undisturbed since December 14, 1972, waiting – like the rest of us – for someone to come back.