<P> The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969 . There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 22 August 1976 until 14 December 2013 . </P> <P> To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972 . </P> <P> After the unsuccessful attempt by the Luna 1 to land on the moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard (unpowered) moon landing later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4 . Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976 . In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions . The U.S. followed with five unmanned Surveyor soft landings . </P> <P> The Soviet Union achieved the first unmanned lunar soil sample return with the Luna 16 probe on 24 September 1970 . This was followed by Luna 20 and Luna 24 in 1972 and 1976, respectively . Following the failure at launch in 1969 of the first Lunokhod, Luna E-8 No. 201, the Luna 17 and Luna 21 were successful unmanned lunar rover missions in 1970 and 1973 . </P>

When did us first land on the moon