With the launch of Artemis II in April of 2026, humans are finally set to add to the historical precedent set in the late 1960s and early 1970s: a return to the Moon. Prior to their expected arrival at our nearest neighboring planetary body, expected to occur after just over a four day journey, a gap of more than 50 years persisted between human visits to the Moon. During the Apollo era, only 24 people ever flew to the vicinity of the Moon, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth to do so. Twelve of those travelers, on six independent missions, actually set foot on the lunar surface. Many artifacts have been left behind on the Moon during that time: flags, photographs, seismometers, mirrors, and even vehicles, while those same humans brought back rocks, dirt, and actual pieces of the Moon. (An autonomous sample return mission, from the lunar far side, was also conducted by China earlier this decade.)

Of everyone still alive today, fewer than 25% are old enough to have memories of these monumental moments in history: when humanity traveled to and landed on the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Unsurprisingly, some people — most of them too young to have experienced those moments for themselves — are skeptical that the Moon landings ever happened. Thankfully, in science, we don’t need to be there ourselves to have proof. Here are four different pieces of evidence we can point to that demonstrate the Moon landings actually occurred.

This iconic image, taken by Neil Armstrong, shows Buzz Aldrin planting the US flag on the Moon. Note the presence of footprints in the foreground. These (and other) astronaut footprints are still visible from orbit around the Moon, but no Earth-based telescope can image anywhere near the necessary resolution to reveal them from the ground.

1.) Lunar footprints.

Here on Earth, footprints generally don’t last very long. Wherever you leave your tracks, you fully expect that natural phenomena will eventually cover them up, whether it takes minutes, days, or weeks. Winds blowing along the sand dunes, rains in the forest, or any combination of plant, animal, and weather activity will typically eliminate all evidence remaining from your tracks over time.

This happens for a variety of physical reasons, such as that Earth has:

• an atmosphere,
• weather,
• liquid water on our surface,
• and living species of organisms everywhere, including sea, air, land, and underground.

However, if humans truly have walked on the Moon, we would expect our footprints to remain there. Those features that erase terrestrial footprints rather quickly are almost entirely absent on the Moon. Without winds, rains, snows, glaciers, rockslides, or any other means of moving and rearranging the particles on the surface of the Moon, any footprints that we make should remain for an interminable length of time.

On Earth, footprints or other markings on the surface are only temporary, and are easily erased by the winds, rains, and other surface activity that comes about on a world with an atmosphere, oceans, tectonic activity, and life. On the Moon, however, those conditions are absent, and any alterations to the surface, even those made by humans more than 50 years ago, should persist.

The only rearrangement of lunar sand and grains that we know of occurs when objects collide with the Moon and kick up dust, which can then settle across the lunar surface: an extremely rare (and usually very localized) occurrence. However, these rearrangements of surface particles do happen and aren’t limited to the small “flashes” that are occasionally seen by astronomers. Just recently, a new crater more than an eighth of a mile wide was formed in the late spring of 2024, erasing any imprints that would have been there simply by overwriting them with impact crater ejecta. This is generally the only substantial way for the motion of lunar surface particles to occur.

The other options simply won’t do.

• Sunlight striking the surface particles is inefficient; they are too heavy.
• The lunar atmosphere is only approximately one atom thick; insufficient to move substantial amounts of material.
• Launch and lander activity isn’t energetic enough to substantially alter the distribution of material on the Moon; astronaut footpaths should persist even after they left for their return journey.

If we ever landed and traveled on the Moon, the evidence should still be there. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has orbited and mapped the Moon at the highest resolution ever, returning hundreds of terabytes worth of data, has something to say about that.

Apollo 12 was the first precision landing of humans on the Moon, and we explored a much greater amount of the lunar surface than during the first landing. The dark gray markings on the surface are astronaut footprints, which have stood the test of time on the Moon, as the processes that erase them on Earth are absent on the Moon.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged the entire lunar surface, including most areas multiple times, enabling it to detect any large-scale changes that occur across the surface. However, even higher resolution is possible of specific regions thanks to an instrument aboard that spacecraft: the orbiter’s Narrow Angle Camera. In fact, in publicly available images from that spacecraft, three of the Apollo-era landing sites — of Apollo 12, 14, and 17 — can be viewed with unprecedented precision and accuracy. By going close to the lunar surface and photographing it with modern instruments from that low altitude, the LRO team was able to achieve resolutions as low as 35 centimeters (about 14 inches) per pixel.

The Apollo 12 image shows not only the physical landing site (marked “Intrepid Descent Stage” on the image), but also the Surveyor 3 probe that had been on the Moon since 1967, visited by the Apollo 12 astronauts two-and-a-half years later! There’s the bright, white “L” shape near the ALSEP equipment label; the “L” is due to highly reflective power cables that run from the central station to two of its instruments.

And finally, the dark paths that look like dried-up canals? Those are astronaut footprints.

The Apollo 14 landing site is still intact, and our images of it here in the 21st century still carry the legacy of this over-50-years-old event. The lunar surface changes very slowly over time in most locations, and the changes we made in 1971 are still perceptible today, virtually unchanged since they were originally made.

The view of Apollo 14 is less spectacular, but perhaps even more famous. You can still see the descent module and the ALSEP equipment, but nothing else leaps out at you. Well, except for the footpaths once again: footpaths that travel in a variety of different directions.

Here’s a trivia question for you: do you know who made the astronaut footprints from the Apollo 14 mission?

The answers are Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard. Although both of them passed away, Alan first in 1998 and Edgar more recently in 2016, Alan was not only the first American ever launched into space, but the first to play a sport — golf — on the lunar surface!

Although we never found the golf balls that Alan proclaimed went “miles and miles” when he hit them with a 6-iron (although perhaps a wedge would have made a better choice for the sandy lunar regolith), we can absolutely see the evidence of the astronauts’ presence left behind on the Moon.

These tracks, footpaths, and reflections from the remnant equipment still persist today and can still be seen in imaging today: even more than 50 years after they were imprinted onto the Moon.

A photograph from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the landing site of Apollo 17. The tracks of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) can be clearly seen, as can the vehicle itself.

As we advanced to later and later stages of the Apollo program, the final missions carried larger, more, and more sophisticated pieces of equipment with them: equipment that largely still remains on the Moon today. Apollo 17 was the final launched and crewed mission of the Apollo program, where Eugene (Gene) Cernan and Harrison (Jack) Schmitt became the final humans to walk on the Moon, as of today in April of 2026.

Compared to the earlier Apollo missions shown above, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaging with the narrow-angle camera paints a notably different picture at this high resolution. Yes, there’s still the descent module on the surface, the ALSEP equipment and the footpaths. But look closer: There’s also something marked “LRV” as well as a lighter set of two parallel tracks that run across the surface.

That’s another trivia question for you: do you know what they are?

The Lunar Roving Vehicle was included on the last three Apollo missions and enabled the astronauts to travel greater distances and explore more diverse regions of the Moon than they were able to on foot alone. The tracks of these vehicles are still present today, and can be seen in data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The gravitational effects of Earth cannot be felt by astronauts on the Moon.

That’s the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle! Included on the final three Apollo missions — Apollo 15, 16, and 17 — its tracks on the surface are distinctly different from human footprints, and allowed the astronauts on those missions to achieve distances far greater than those reached on the earlier missions. The tracks from Apollo 17’s LRV don’t even come close to fitting in this narrow-angle image; they extend for a total distance of over 22 miles, reaching a maximum range of nearly five miles away from the landing site.

It would take an array of several dozens of LRO narrow angle camera images to capture the full suite of rover tracks left by Apollo 17’s far-reaching mission; the chosen one, two images above, is centered on the landing site itself.

And yet, all of that copious, substantial evidence that we can still see on the Moon represents only one part of the four major lines that demonstrate the veracity of our trips to our nearest neighbor. Here are the other three.

Apollo 10, known as the ‘dress rehearsal’ for the Moon landing, was actually equipped with all the apparatuses that would have allowed them to land on the lunar surface themselves. They came closer to the Moon than any previous crewed mission, and paved the way for the actual Moon landing which took place with Apollo 11 in July of 1969. The entire endeavor required only Newtonian physics, and astronauts in orbit around the Moon experienced themselves as completely weightless.

2.) There are over 8,000 original photos documenting our trips to the Moon.

Perhaps we all need a reminder of what the sacrifices were that went into our journey to the Moon. We accomplished the unthinkable by banding together to achieve a common goal, and we could do it all once again.

Back in 2005, a heroic effort was made to digitize every single one of the photos associated with all of the Apollo missions that went to space, from Apollo 7 through Apollo 17. Then, in 2015, NASA took a step toward availability and accessibility that was truly unprecedented: they released all of the photos online, publicly, through a publicly available Flickr photostream.

Even here in 2026, those images remain publicly available, with many of them containing the original markings denoting the Hasselblad cameras that they were acquired with. Although there are several pictures from this selection that were indeed made famous back in the Apollo era, many of them remain rarely viewed by human eyes. You can check them all out for yourself, as they remain sorted into a series of incredible albums, with each corresponding mission clearly marked.

Why, what’s this? It’s an image taken by Bill Anders of Apollo 8: the first crewed mission to go to the Moon and orbit it. This photo was taken as the capsule orbited the Moon and Earth appeared to rise over the horizon. The spacecraft window can be seen in the foreground.

Some of the greatest and most eye-opening photos, stories, and quotes came back from those trips, including some from Apollo 8’s Bill Anders, who took not only the famous “Earthrise” photo that was sent around the world in late 1968, but also a series of photos showing the Earth rising over the limb of the Moon, as shown above.

Anders described the journey to the Moon as follows:

“You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing; and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame.”

Anders perished just two years ago, on June 7, 2024, in a plane crash at the age of 90. His death left just six Apollo-era astronauts, including four moonwalkers, remaining:

• Buzz Aldrin,
• David Scott,
• Charlie Duke,
• Harrison “Jack” Schmitt,
• Fred Haise,
• and Rusty Schweickart.

Some of the deployed scientific equipment taken to the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission, where the installation and operation of this equipment was well-documented both remotely and in situ by the astronauts who installed it.

3.) There’s an enormous legacy of scientific equipment we’ve installed on the Moon.

Did you know that we brought up a large amount of scientific equipment and installed it on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions?

• Lunar seismometers were installed by Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16, with the most advanced ones continuing to transmit data to Earth until 1977.
• Apollo 11 installed the lunar laser ranging retroreflector array, which is still operational today, allowing us to reflect lasers off of it and measure the Earth-Moon distance to centimeter precision. (We also use the corner reflectors installed as part of the Apollo 14, 15, and the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover for this endeavor.)
• The SWC experiment was set up, which measured the solar wind composition from the Moon’s surface.
• The SWS experiment was conducted, allowing us to measure the solar wind’s spectra from the Moon.
• The LSM experiment installed equipment necessary to measure the lunar magnetic field.
• The LDD experiment, which measured how lunar dust would settle on and pollute solar panels: a key step toward managing the dust on future rovers, including current Mars rovers.

Of course, there were many other such experiments performed as well, with every successful one returning useful data that still survives today. The very existence of that data, as well as the persistence of the lunar retroreflectors that are still in use today, represents some pretty strong evidence that we did, in fact, land on the Moon.

This image, from January 31, 1971, shows sunrise from Alan Shepard’s 12 o’clock pan taken near the Lunar Module at the start of EVA-1 (moonwalk). Without the Sun glare, we can see some detail on the Cone-Crater ridge. The flag, S-Band antenna, ladder, and the LRRR (Laser Ranging Retroreflector) are all located in the west footpad. The MET (Modular Equipment Transporter) has not been deployed and is still folded up on the MESA (Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly).

4.) We brought back samples, and learned a ton about lunar geology from them.

The final two astronauts to ever walk on the Moon, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, ran into quite a surprise during the Apollo 17 mission. Schmitt, the lone civilian-astronaut (and only astronaut-scientist) to travel to the Moon, was often described as the most business-like of all the astronauts. That’s why it must have been such a shock to hear him exclaim the following when he walked through what appeared to be a relatively mundane, typical area of the lunar surface:

“Oh, hey! Wait a minute… THERE IS ORANGE SOIL! It’s all over! I stirred it up with my feet!”

The dull, grey lunar soil you’re used to seeing — that we’re all used to seeing — in one particular spot was only a very thin veneer, covering a rich, orange landscape beneath: a color difference that’s captured in film, but that must have been truly spectacular to behold in person.

The orange soil, at the lower right of the image, really stands out when compared to the colorations visible on the rest of the Moon. Apollo 17, perhaps because they had a geoscientist as one of their moonwalkers, was able to spot this geological oddity that taught us so much about the Moon’s origin and composition.

Like any good scientist, or any good explorer, for that matter, Cernan and Schmitt:

• documented what they saw,
• took copious amounts of pictures,
• collected extensive amounts of data,
• and brought samples back to Earth for further analysis.

It also led to a profound question: what is it that could have caused orange soil on the Moon? This was a particularly puzzling find, as the Moon is perhaps the most featureless of all the large, airless rocks in our Solar System.

It would fall to laboratory scientists back on Earth, with sophisticated equipment, to unveil the answers. What that analysis revealed was fantastic: this was volcanic glass. What occurred was that molten lava from the interior of the Moon erupted, some 3 to 4 billion years ago, up above the airless surface and into the vacuum of space. As the lava became exposed to the vacuum, it separated out into tiny fragments and froze, forming tiny beads of volcanic glass in orange and black colors. (The tin in some of the fragments is what gives the soil its characteristic orange color.)

Olivine inclusions found in lunar samples have a spectacularly high water concentration of 1,200 ppm. This is remarkable, because it’s the same exact concentration as the water found in terrestrial (Earth-based) olivine inclusions, pointing to a common origin for the Earth and the Moon.

Over time, of course, our technological capabilities have improved: not just in the realms of spaceflight and astronaut technology, but in the realm of microscopic analysis as well. This means that subsequently reanalyzing the material returned from the Moon during various missions can lead to new insights, even today.

In 2011, a reanalysis of those samples was performed, and the scientists analyzing that orange soil from Apollo 17 found evidence that water was included in the volcanic eruption. Moreover, the concentrations of water in the glass beads that were formed turned out to be approximately 50 times as great as the expected amount of water calculated to be “typical” for samples originating from the Moon. Olivine inclusions, in particular, showed water present in concentrations up to 1,200 parts per million, as opposed to the more typical ~25 parts-per-million.

Most remarkably, the lunar samples we’ve found indicate that the Earth and the Moon have a common origin: a shocking find that revolutionized the field of Solar System science when it was first uncovered. This idea is consistent with the notion of a giant impact that occurred only a few tens of millions of years into the birth of our Solar System. Without direct samples, obtained by the Apollo missions and brought back to Earth, we never would have been able to draw such a startling, but spectacular, conclusion.

A NASA picture taken on May 5, 1972 shows a close-up view or ‘mug shot’ of Apollo 16 lunar sample no. 68815, a dislodged fragment from a parent boulder. A fillet-soil sample was taken close to the boulder, allowing for study of the type and rate of erosion acting on lunar rocks.

There are many different lines of evidence that point to humanity’s presence on the Moon, but these four are easily accessible to almost anyone and are extremely difficult to refute or explain away with alternative scenarios.

• We landed there and can see the evidence, directly, when we look with the appropriate resolution.
• We have extraordinary amounts of evidence, ranging from eyewitness testimony to the data record tracking the missions to photographs documenting the trips, all supporting the fact that we landed and walked on the lunar surface.
• We have a slew of scientific instruments that were installed and took data, a few of which can still be seen and used today.
• And finally, we’ve brought back lunar samples and learned about the Moon’s history, composition, and likely origin from it.

There are many ways to “prove it” for yourself, but the conclusion is inescapable: We really did land on the Moon. What’s important to recognize, from the perspective of a scientist, is that we can validate it yet again by performing the right scientific test — whether through in situ imaging or remote laser ranging — any time we want.

This article was first published in January of 2022. It was updated in April of 2026.