How many rockets have reached the Moon?

The question hides a common confusion. A launcher burns its propellant in the first few minutes and sheds stages along the way; what actually makes the translunar journey is the spacecraft, not the rocket that pushed it. Counting "rockets that have reached the Moon" really means counting spacecraft that entered lunar orbit, landed or crashed there, and the result varies a great deal depending on what gets included in the list.

The solid figure is that of crewed flights. The Apollo program, active between 1962 and 1972, totalled eleven crewed missions and six Moon landings, with twelve astronauts who walked on the surface. All of those lunar missions flew on the same launcher, the Saturn V, so if one insists on counting rockets, the crewed tally shrinks to a single model.

There were also spacecraft that reached the Moon without touching it. Apollo 10 carried out a full rehearsal of the following mission, with every operation except the landing: its lunar module descended to 14 km above the surface and climbed back up. Apollo 13 had to abort its descent after oxygen tank number 2 in the service module exploded on 14 April 1970 and disabled the command module; the crew looped around the Moon and splashed down on 17 April. To that list is added a long roster of automated probes, Soviet, American, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and private, which have been placing hardware on the surface since the 1960s.