Apollo Lunar Module
lander used in the Apollo program
The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed spacecraft to operate exclusively in space, and remains the only crewed vehicle to land anywhere beyond Earth.
Structurally and aerodynamically incapable of flight through Earth's atmosphere, the two-stage Lunar Module was ferried to lunar orbit attached to the Apollo command and service module (CSM), about twice its mass. Its crew of two flew the Lunar Module from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface. During takeoff, the spent descent stage was used as a launch pad for the ascent stage which then flew back to the command module, after which it was also discarded.
Overseen by Grumman, the LM's development was plagued with problems that delayed its first uncrewed flight by about ten months and its first crewed flight by about three months. Regardless, the LM became the most reliable component of the Apollo–Saturn space vehicle. The total cost of the LM for development and the units produced was $21.65 billion in 2016 dollars, adjusting from a nominal total of $2.29 billion using the NASA New Start Inflation Indices.
Ten Lunar Modules were launched into space. Of these, six were landed by humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q208382. The Library of Congress control number is sh85078854. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1969 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Apollo Lunar Module” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.