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The Apollo program was the third human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ), the United States ' civilian space agency.

First conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a three-man spacecraft to follow the one-man Project Mercury which put the first Americans in space, Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal of " landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth " by the end of the 1960s, which he proposed in a May 25, 1961 address to Congress.

Project Mercury was followed by the two-man Project Gemini ( 1962-66 ).

The first manned flight of Apollo was in 1968 and it succeeded in landing the first humans on Earth's Moon in 1969 through 1972.