Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface on 20 July 1969, commanding Apollo 11, with Buzz Aldrin following about twenty minutes later while Michael Collins stayed in orbit aboard the command module. Armstrong went first largely for a practical reason: the lander's hatch opened in a way that made it awkward for the pilot in the right-hand position to get out first, and the commander was closer to it. The landing itself came far nearer to failure than the broadcast suggested. The guidance computer threw alarms during the descent because it was being overloaded, the automatic system was steering towards a boulder field, and Armstrong took manual control and flew on to a clear patch with only seconds of fuel margin left. The mission was the culmination of a programme announced by President Kennedy in 1961 with an explicit deadline of the decade's end, driven by Cold War competition.

Several more Apollo crews landed afterwards, and twelve people in total walked on the Moon.