In December 1972, Apollo 17 communicates with Mission Control on the final trip to the moon, marking the end of the Apollo lunar landing program.

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After Apollo 9's launch on March 3, 1969, the crew communicates with Mission Control from space. The Apollo 9 mission was a crucial test run for the Apollo 11 moon landing three months later.

On July 17, 1975, President Gerald Ford speaks by telephone to the Apollo astronauts following their rendezvous and docking with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This was the first joint orbital mission between the two superpowers, and it helped pave the way for further cooperation in the exploration of space.

In this video from Modern Marvels, we learn about the Apollo spaceflight program and the engineering disasters that plagued it. Three astronauts died while training for the first planned mission, Apollo 1, in 1967. Then, one year after Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon, the Apollo 13 mission almost ended in disaster when an explosion occurred on board.

At a press conference the day after the January 27, 1967, Apollo 1 accident, a NASA spokesperson explains the cause of the flash fire that broke out inside the cabin of the spacecraft during a launch pad test. The vehicle was being prepared for the first piloted space flight. The tragedy ended in the deaths of all three astronauts on board: Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, Lt. Col. Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee.

On April 13, 1970, James Lovell, Jr., John Swigert, Jr., and Fred Haise, Jr., were en route to the Moon aboard Apollo 13 when disaster struck 200,000 miles from earth.

Just after liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis on July 8, 2011, Kennedy Space Center Mission Control notes the historic moment. NASA retired the 30-year-old space shuttle program, making this the final space shuttle flight.