Free Printable Moon Landing Word Search

The 1969 crew and their craft, the flight step by step, the lunar surface, and the landings before and since.

Name Date

Moon Landing Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 20 words found

SPACESUITLAUNCH

MOONWALKCMEAGLE

ETRANQUILITYEDU

CRATERARMSTRONG

SSNIEFLSLSTHKLR

PTRFATUANINDTMT

LFFNPBNTROCKETF

ASTRONAUTNYRNFO

SRCRLGRROCAMHLO

HVOELFMNGOLAGAT

DBLAONOLANDINGP

OLLGMQDTTTRINLR

WGIAOPUNORIUHII

NTNKSLLMNONGBDN

ROSRAWEMMLORBIT

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

ApolloAPOLLO
ArmstrongARMSTRONG
AldrinALDRIN
CollinsCOLLINS
EagleEAGLE
TranquilityTRANQUILITY
Mission controlMISSION CONTROL
FlagFLAG
AstronautASTRONAUT
SaturnSATURN
RocketROCKET
Lunar moduleLUNAR MODULE
LaunchLAUNCH
OrbitORBIT
LandingLANDING
MoonwalkMOONWALK
SplashdownSPLASHDOWN
CraterCRATER
FootprintFOOTPRINT
SpacesuitSPACESUIT

20 words from the Moon Landing Key Terms list.

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Answer key: Moon Landing Word Search

SPACESUITLAUNCH

MOONWALKCMEAGLE

ETRANQUILITYEDU

CRATERARMSTRONG

SSNIEFLSLSTHKLR

PTRFATUANINDTMT

LFFNPBNTROCKETF

ASTRONAUTNYRNFO

SRCRLGRROCAMHLO

HVOELFMNGOLAGAT

DBLAONOLANDINGP

OLLGMQDTTTRINLR

WGIAOPUNORIUHII

NTNKSLLMNONGBDN

ROSRAWEMMLORBIT

APOLLO, ARMSTRONG, ALDRIN, COLLINS, EAGLE, TRANQUILITY, MISSION CONTROL, FLAG, ASTRONAUT, SATURN, ROCKET, LUNAR MODULE, LAUNCH, ORBIT, LANDING, MOONWALK, SPLASHDOWN, CRATER, FOOTPRINT, SPACESUIT

Next step Print the phases and the features of the Moon Find orbits, free fall and weightlessness

All 125 words

First Moon Landing 24

Aldrin The second person on the Moon, known as Buzz; he followed about 20 minutes later.
Apollo The NASA program that put twelve people on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972.
Armstrong The first person who walked on the Moon; his first name was Neil.
Astronaut A person trained to serve on the crew of a spacecraft.
Collins The third crew member, Michael, who stayed circling overhead in the command ship.
Columbia The name of the command ship, the only part of the flight that came back to Earth.
Commander The crew member in charge of a spaceflight.
Decade Ten years; the goal was to reach the Moon before the 1960s were out.
Eagle The name of the craft that set two men down on the Moon; the bird on the mission patch.
Eleven The number of the flight that first put people on the Moon.
Flag The United States one was planted in view of the TV camera.
Giant leap What 'one small step' was called in the words spoken at the first step onto the Moon.
Hornet The aircraft carrier that picked the crew up from the sea.

Show all 125 words (112 more)

First Moon Landing, continued

Houston The Texas city of the control center, and the name crews call it by on the radio.
July The month of the first trip in 1969: up on the 16th, down on the 20th, home on the 24th.
Kennedy The president who in 1961 set the goal of a crewed trip to the Moon and back.
Mankind All people; the last word of the message on the plate the crew left behind.
Mission control The room of engineers on the ground who watch over a spaceflight and talk to the crew.
Pacific The ocean where the crew came down at the end of the flight.
Parade A celebration in the streets; New York and Chicago each held one for the crew.
Plaque A steel plate on the lander's ladder, signed by the crew and the president.
Quarantine The 21 days the crew were kept apart afterward, in case they had brought back germs.
Television How hundreds of millions of people watched the first steps as they happened.
Tranquility The lunar 'sea' where the first crew set down; their base took the same name.

Rocket and Spacecraft 23

Antenna A rod or dish that sends and receives radio waves.
Capsule A small crew cabin built to survive the return through the air to Earth.
Command module The cone-shaped cabin where the three crew rode, the part built to come home.
Computer The machine on board that handled guidance, navigation and control.
Foil The thin amber, silver and black wrapping on the lander, there for insulation.
Footpad The round dish at the bottom of each landing leg, where the craft met the ground.
Hatch The door of a spacecraft.
Heat shield The coating that chars away to protect the crew cabin as it plunges back through the air.
Kerosene The refined fuel, known as RP-1, that the first section of the launch vehicle burned.
Ladder The nine rungs on the lander's front leg, climbed down to reach the ground.
Launch pad The platform a space vehicle stands on and leaves from; this flight used 39A.
Legs The lander stood on four of these, folded for the trip and unfolded before the way down.
Lunar module The two-part craft that carried two people between the mother ship and the Moon's surface.
Nozzle The bell-shaped opening of an engine, where the hot gas speeds up and rushes out.
Porch The small platform outside the lander's door, above the rungs.
Radar The radio instrument that reported the lander's height and sink rate on the way down.
Rocket A vehicle pushed along by hot gas shooting out of its engines at high speed.
Saturn The name, followed by V, of the giant three-part vehicle that carried crews toward the Moon.
Service module The cylinder behind the crew cabin that supplied propulsion, electricity and stores.
Stage One section of a launch vehicle, with its own engines and propellant.
Thruster A small jet that turns or nudges a spacecraft.
Tower The frame on top of the crew cabin that held the escape motor for the first minutes of flight.
Window The lander's were small and triangular, for a view of the landing site.

Flight to the Moon and Back 24

Alarm A warning signal; the lander's computer raised several, coded 1201 and 1202.
Ascent The climb from the Moon's surface back up to the waiting command ship.
Blackout A loss of radio contact, as while a craft is behind the Moon.
Burn A firing of an engine to change speed or direction.
Checklist A list of steps that a crew works through in order.
Countdown The backward count of the time left before a vehicle leaves the ground.
Course The direction a craft is heading; the trip out needed only one small correction to it.
Descent The ride down to the Moon's surface, with the engine firing as a brake.
Docking The joining of two separate spacecraft in flight.
Earthrise The home planet coming up over the Moon's edge, photographed by a crew in 1968.
Ignition The moment an engine lights.
Jettison To cast off a part no longer needed, as was done with the lander's upper half.
Landing Setting a craft down; the first on the Moon with a crew came on July 20, 1969.
Launch To send a space vehicle up from the ground; the first Moon crew left on July 16, 1969.
Liftoff The moment a space vehicle rises off its pad.
Moonwalk Time spent outside on the lunar surface; the first lasted about two and a half hours.
Orbit The curved path of one body or craft around another.
Recovery Picking up the crew and their cabin from the sea.
Rendezvous The meeting of two spacecraft that match paths and draw very close.
Splashdown The coming down of a spacecraft in the sea, usually under parachutes.
Touchdown The instant a craft's feet meet the ground.
Trajectory The path an object takes as it moves.
Translunar Describes the leg of the flight from Earth out to the Moon.
Undock To separate two joined spacecraft, as the lander did before going down.

On the Moon's Surface 28

Airless Having almost no gas around it, like the Moon.
Backpack The life-support unit worn behind the shoulders: oxygen, cooling and a radio link.
Basalt Dark stone from cooled lava; one of two kinds found in the first crew's collection.
Boot The outer footwear worn for walking on the Moon.
Boulder A huge stone; the first lander was steered past a field of them.
Camera The device that took the photographs and sent the live picture.
Crater A hollow with a raised rim, made when a smaller object strikes the ground at great speed.
Dust The finest powder of the Moon's ground, with grains under a millimeter across.
Experiment A test set up to learn something; the first crew left a small package of them.
Footprint The mark left where someone has stepped; the Moon has no weather to wear one away.
Glove The covering for the hand, which locked onto the suit at the forearm.
Hammer The geologist's tool used to pound sampling tubes into the ground.
Helmet The clear bubble worn over the head, nicknamed the fishbowl.
Highlands The brighter regions of the Moon that stand apart from the dark plains.
Hop A two-footed jump, one of the ways of getting about that the first crew tried.
Mare A large, dark lunar plain of hardened lava; the name is Latin for sea.
Regolith The loose layer of grains and fragments that covers the Moon.
Rille A long, narrow channel in the Moon's surface; the name is German for groove.
Rock Solid stone; the first crew gathered 47.5 pounds of it and soil to take home.
Rover The four-wheeled battery car driven on the last three crewed visits.
Sample A small amount collected so that it can be studied later.
Seismometer An instrument that records shaking of the ground; one was left to measure moonquakes.
Shadow The dark area behind something that blocks the Sun; one of the crew felt cooler in the lander's.
Solar wind The stream of particles from the Sun, which the crews caught on a sheet of foil.
Spacesuit The sealed outfit that keeps a person alive outside the craft, with oxygen and pressure.
Tongs A gripping tool on a long handle, used for picking up stones.
Vacuum Space with almost no matter in it, which is what surrounds the Moon.
Visor The shade worn over the clear headgear when working outside.

Moon Missions Before and After 26

Antares The lander of the third crewed visit, named after a star.
Artemis The NASA program that aims to return people to the Moon.
Challenger The lander of the sixth and last crewed visit.
Chandrayaan India's lunar program; its third flight set a lander and a small rover down in August 2023.
Descartes The name of the highland area explored by the fifth crew, in April 1972.
Falcon The lander of the fourth crewed visit, named for the Air Force Academy mascot.
Far side The lunar half turned away from Earth; a craft first set down there in 2019.
Fra Mauro The site of the third crewed visit, named after a crater that lies within it.
Gemini The two-person NASA flights of 1965 and 1966 that developed the skills needed for the Moon.
Hadley The name of the winding channel beside which the fourth crew set down.
Impact A crash into the surface, which is how the earliest probes arrived.
Intrepid The lander of the second crewed visit, in November 1969.
Luna The series of probes whose number 2 was the first craft to reach the Moon, in 1959.
Lunokhod Remote-controlled wheeled explorers from the USSR; the first reached the Moon in 1970.
Ranger The NASA probes of the 1960s that sent close-up pictures until they struck the Moon.
Robot A machine that carries out its tasks automatically or by remote control.
Seventeen The number of the last flight to carry people to the Moon, in December 1972.
Soft landing A touchdown gentle enough to leave the craft unharmed; first done on the Moon in 1966.
South pole The point at one end of the Moon's axis, where craters in permanent shadow hold water ice.
Soviet Describes the Union, the rival of the United States, whose probes reached the Moon first.
Space Race The Cold War contest between two rival nations to lead in rocketry and Moon flight.
Storms The second crew set down on the vast lunar plain called the Ocean of these.
Surveyor The NASA program of 1966 to 1968 that showed a machine could set down gently on the Moon.
Taurus-Littrow The valley explored by the last crew to visit the Moon.
Twelve The number of people to have walked the Moon's surface.
Uncrewed Flown with no people on board.

How it works

This free printable moon landing word search puts the same 20 words on every first sheet: Apollo, Eagle, Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, Lunar module, Mission control, Splashdown and 12 more. The Moon's eight phases have their own moon phases word search.

Read the full guide

July 1969 in three lists

Under Start from a list, First Moon Landing has 24 words about the first crew and their eight days, from Kennedy and Houston to Quarantine and Parade. Rocket and Spacecraft has 23, such as Stage, Heat shield, Footpad and Porch. Flight to the Moon and Back has 24, among them Countdown, Docking, Descent, Rendezvous and Jettison.

On the surface, and the other landings

On the Moon's Surface has 28 words for what the crews wore, used and walked on: Regolith, Basalt, Rille, Visor, Seismometer. Moon Missions Before and After has 26, with the probes Luna, Ranger and Surveyor, four later landers, five landing sites, and Artemis.

Lunar module, Mission control, Giant leap and 11 more two-part entries hide closed up: GIANTLEAP.

Questions and answers

When was the first Moon landing?

On July 20, 1969. The Apollo 11 lander Eagle set down in the Sea of Tranquility four days after launch from Florida. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface about six and a half hours later.

Who were the astronauts on the first Moon landing?

Apollo 11 carried three. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Command module pilot Michael Collins stayed in lunar orbit aboard Columbia, and all three came home together.

How many people have walked on the Moon?

Twelve, all of them Apollo astronauts. Two walked on the surface on each of six landings between July 1969 and December 1972, while a third crew member stayed in orbit. Nobody has set foot there since.

How long did the first Moon landing mission last?

A little over eight days, from launch on July 16, 1969 to splashdown in the Pacific on July 24. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours 36 minutes on the surface, about two and a half of those hours outside the lander.

Is the moon landing word search free to print with an answer key?

Yes, free, with no sign-up. It prints on Letter or A4 as the puzzle with its word list, then a key with every word ringed. With Show clues, not words on, Astronaut reads "A person trained to serve on the crew of a spacecraft."

All 125 words

First Moon Landing 24

First Moon Landing, continued

Rocket and Spacecraft 23

Flight to the Moon and Back 24

On the Moon's Surface 28

Moon Missions Before and After 26

How it works

July 1969 in three lists

On the surface, and the other landings

Questions and answers

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