v0.2 - 25-04-2020
Earth's moon is a body that has no atmosphere. Therefore a parachute landing is by definition, impossible. These landings are quite complex as one needs a high amount of control over the rocket engines to perform a safe landing. This can be seen by the motor used on the Apollo Lunar Lander which could be throttled to between 10 and 60% of full thrust. Another moon where landing attempts were to be made is Phobos, one of the Martian moons. Phobos is much smaller than the earth-moon, making landings even more difficult. One could compare a landing on the Martian moons more to an asteroid lander. Landings on these surfaces can be found on separate pages.
Operator: Soviet space program
Target: Moon
Landing date: 1959-1976
Status: Retired
The Luna programme was a multi-billion two-decade-long programme that consisted of more than 40 launches, however, only 24 have official Luna numbers as the others failed to leave earth's orbit. The programme achieved several "firsts", namely first lunar impactor, first lunar flyby, first spacecraft to take a picture of the far side of the moon, first soft landing, first lunar orbiter, and lastly first circumlunar probe to return to earth. The programme was divided into 3 generations of spacecraft.
The first generation of spacecraft ware Luna 1 through 3. Luna 1 was intended as an impactor was missed the moon and was the first spacecraft to do a lunar flyby. Luna 1 released one kg of sodium gas in space making it visible and allowing it to be tracked by astronomers from the Earth. There was no propulsion on board and it was powered using mercury oxide batteries. It also discovered the existence of solar winds and the lack of a magnetic field on the moon. Luna 2 was similar to Luna 1 and was successful in impacting the moon. Luna 3 was a flyby mission that clicked 29 photos of the far side of the moon. Unfortunately, only 17 of those images could be transmitted back to earth.
The second generation of spacecrafts was Luna 4 through 14. Luna 4-8 were landers that failed at soft landing. Luna 8 completed the development of a star tracker and failed because a puncture in the airbag led to a landing failure. Luna 9 was the first successful lander on the moon. It also debunked the fear that the surface the moon was too soft, and the lander would sink in.
Luna 10 was the first spacecraft to successfully orbit a planetary body other than earth. The “Internationale” was broadcast from Luna 10 during its first orbit and played in front of the Twenty-third Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Luna 11 was an orbiter who amongst other things tested the efficiency of lubricants for gear transmission in vacuum for future rover missions. Luna 13 was a lander which was very similar to Luna 9. It took panorama pictures that took 100 minutes to transfer each. Luna 14 was an orbiter to test communication systems in lunar orbit and earth and engineering test of gear transmission systems in a vacuum.
The third generations of spacecraft were Luna 15 through 24. Luna 15 was a sample return mission that took place at the same time as Apollo 11. It is suspected to be a last-ditch attempt at getting lunar samples back to earth before the US. Unfortunately, the landing wasn't successful. Luna 16 was the first successful Soviet sample return mission. The lander had a drill and robotic arm to load the samples into the rocket. The spacecraft was able to drill to a depth of 35 cm before encountering hard rock. 101 grams of sample were returned to earth. There was no control system on the return rocket and there was only one burn to set it on the trajectory of Earth.
Luna 17 was the first successful rover mission by the Soviet Union. Rover Lunokhod 1 used solar cells for power, travelled more than 10 km and lasted 11 days. It sent over 20000 pictures and 200 panoramas. Luna 19 was the first third-generation lunar orbiter. Luna 20 was a sample return mission that sent back 30g of moon regolith. Luna 21 was the second successful rover mission that landed Lunokhod 2. It had a top speed of 2 km/hr and used polonium-210 as a heat source. It operated for 4 months, and travelled 37 km. The Lunokhod retroreflector is still used for lasers ranging from Earth.
Luna 22 was an orbiter mission similar to Luna 19. It tested lubricants on different frictional surfaces and studied different coatings with varying reflective properties. Luna 23 was a sample return mission that landed successfully but the sample return apparatus didn’t work, so no samples were obtained. Luna 24 was a successful sample return mission. It landed only a few hundred meters from Luna 23 and sent 170.1 g of samples.
Luna 1
Picture of dark side of Moon taken by Luna 3
Luna 16
Lunokhod 1
Operator: Soviet space program
Target: Moon
Landing date: 1964-1970
Status: Retired
Zond program was two distinct series of spacecraft with the goal of exploration of nearby planets and robotic circumlunar loop flights and recovery.
Zond 1-3 used the 3MV planetary probe. Zond 1 and 2 were sent on Venus and Mars flyby respectively. However, both missions lost communication before they reached near the planets. Zond 3 was sent on a lunar flyby mission and was the second spacecraft to click a picture of the far side of the moon. It continued to a trajectory of Mars and eventually lost communication.
Zond 4-8 were the soviet test flights during the moon race. They used the Soyuz L1 spacecraft. These spacecraft travelled in a free-return trajectory around the moon without going into lunar orbit. They were designed to potentially carry two astronauts.
Zond 4 was a test mission launched away from the moon and was supposed to make a skip re-entry. However, the separation mechanism of the re-entry module and service module failed which resulted in the trigger of the self-destruct mechanism at an altitude of 10-15 km/s.
Zond 5 improved on its predecessor and was the first spacecraft to travel around the moon and land safely on Early. Zond 5 had a payload of few animals such as tortoises, flies, worms, etc who returned alive. Additionally, it also carried a full-sized human mannequin with radiation detectors. Due to a failure of attitude sensors, the spacecraft performed a water landing in the Indian Ocean as opposed to a planned land landing.
Zond 6-8 were uncrewed test missions aimed at improving the reliability and circled the moon and landed on earth. Zond 6 aimed at land landing but suffered from cabin depressurisation. This depressurisation led to electronics malfunction and the spacecraft prematurely jettisoned the parachutes and fired the soft-landing thrusters 5.3 kms above the surface. While the capsule crashed, it was still recovered in a one piece. Zond 6 was a precursor to crewed missions, but a range of technical problems prevented that from happening.
Zond 7 was the first in the series to perform a successful land landing and Zond 8 performed a successful sea landing. Unfortunately, these were not followed by crewed missions. Zond missions also carried scientific payloads and gathered data on cosmic rays, solar winds, radio emissions and micrometeoroids.
Operator: NASA
Target: Moon
Landing date: 1961-1965
Status: Retired
The Ranger program often referred as the “Shoot and Hope” program in its early years were a series of spacecrafts launched to advance American space technology and map the surface of the moon. The program was divided into three key blocks. The spacecrafts within the three blocks were nearly identical to each other. The first 6 mission of the Ranger program failed and the missions 7,8 and 9 succeeded. The Ranger spacecrafts were launched on the Atlas rockets and used the Agena second stage to propel them towards the moon. All the missions in the Ranger program were designed to be impactors due to launcher limitations.
Ranger 1 & 2 were meant to test the operations and reliability of the different subsystems. They both failed in low earth orbit after stabilisation issues.
The second block of Ranger spacecraft had a lot more scientific instruments than the first block such as Gamma Ray Spectrometer, TV Camera, Radio Altimeter, etc. It also had a Lunar Impacting Capsule which was meant to survive a 100 mile/hr impact and make measurements for 30 days. The capsule has a seismometer to measure moonquakes. The instrument was housed around two layers of liquids, liquid Freon and water respectively. Additionally, the liquids were housed inside a Balsa wood shell. The iconic stripe paint pattern was chosen to minimise thermal variance in the instrument environment.
Ranger 3 missed the moon by 38,800 km and is still orbiting the Sun. Ranger 4 had a perfect launch, but spacecraft communications got disabled. The capsule impacted the lunar far side. Ranger 5 missed the moon by 725 km
Ranger 5
After the failure of the first two blocks, there was intense pressure to get things working. Therefore, redundancy was added in most key systems such as Power, Communications and TV Cameras. There were 6 cameras with different lenses on board block 3 spacecraft. The cameras fired one after the other to prevent excessive heat and could capture one image every 10 seconds. The communication equipment was designed to send pictures up to 0.2 second before impact.
Ranger 6 impacted the moon, but cameras failed. Ranger 7 was the first successful mission of the program and sent close-up pictures of the lunar surface in July 1, 1964. Ranger 7 had a successful impact and sent over 4000 pictures. Ranger 8 also had a successful impact and sent over 7000 pictures. Ranger 8 had a successful impact and sent over 5800 pictures
Operator: NASA
Target: Moon
Landing date: 1969 (Apollo 11)
Status: Retired
The Apollo Lunar Excursion Module, LEM, was the moon lander of the Apollo project. The LEM was stored in the Saturn V and extracted by the command module after launch. For transit, the LEM would be attached to the forward docking port of Apollo. When the stack was in lunar orbit, two crew members would transfer to the LEM and prepare for landing. The LEM consisted of two parts, the descent and ascent stage. The descent stage was on the bottom of the stack and was powered by a hyperbolic engine with a throttle range of 65 to 92.5%. This allowed for sufficient control for a safe landing. The descent stage also housed the landing legs. These legs would dampen the final landing and housed probes to help the astronauts determine their distance to the lunar surface. The "upper stage" or ascent module also used a hyperbolic engine. It would allow the two astronauts to return to lunar orbit, where they would dock with the orbiting Apollo command module.
The video on the right shows the lift-off of Apollo 17 filmed by the lunar rover. The descent stage is left on the moon and the ascent stage flies off. Note how the exhaust of the N2O2-Aerozine 50 combustion is clear and no flame can be seen. A similar phenomenon was observed in the 2021 Perseverance lander.
Operator: Soviet space program
Target: Moon
Landing date: Never flew to the moon
Status: Cancelled
The LK lander was the Russian alternative to the Apollo LM. The Lk would have launched onboard the N1 rocket below the Soyuz module much like Apollo and LEM were launched. The LK would be extracted after launch and when the combination was around the moon a single cosmonate would space walk over to the Lk. The LK was quite a bit smaller, weiging between 5560 and 6525 kg compared to 15200 and 16400 for the LEM. The Lk only had one hypergolic engine that would be usedo n both ascent and descent flight. The landing legs would stay behind on the moon. Later LK landers would be upgraded to two crew members
LK lander
Operator: SNSA
Target: Moon
Landing date: 01-12-2020
Status: Completed
The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program started with two successful orbital missions launched in 2007 and 2010. The second two missions, Chang'e 3 and 4 showed the Chinese ability to soft-land on the moon. Both landers were about 1200 including a 400 kg rover. Chang'e 3 worked for 959 days, where Chang'e 4 is active today. Before the sample return mission Chang'e 5, there was an intermediate demonstrator called Chang'e 5-T1. This mission was launched in October 2014 to test the re-entry leg of the sample return. The mission became the first successful skipping entry. Chang'e 5 was launched in November 2020, landed in December 2020 and returned to earth on the 16th of that month. The mission marked the first Lunar sample return since Luna 24. The earth entry probe resembled a scaled-down Shenzhou capsule, which in term resembles the Soyuz capsule.
The follow-up mission, Chang'e 6, is scheduled for 2024 and will repeat the Chang'e 5 mission on the Lunar south pole.
Operator: Israel Aerospace Industries
Target: Moon
Landing date: 22-02-2019
Status: Completed, failed
In 2019 the Israeli company Isreal Aerospace Industries became the first commercial company to land a mission on the moon. The mission was launched onboard a Space X falcon 9 together with the PSN-6 satellite. The lander then used its own engines to fly to the moon where it entered a circular lunar orbit. Just before landing a gyroscope failed which could not be solved due to a sudden loss of communication. When communication was restored the capsule had already impacted the moon. At an altitude of 150, the 150 kg (dry mass) lander was still falling at 140 m/s. A second mission is planned for 2024 including a Moon and Mars lander.
Operator: ISRO
Target: Moon
Landing date: 22-07-2019
Status: Completed, failed
In 2019 India embarked on the ambitious mission to become the fourth nation to soft-land a lander on the moon. This lander was launched in July 2019 onboard a GSLV Mark-III as part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission. This mission contained an orbital module, lander and rover. After the Chandrayaan-2 mission entered lunar orbit, the lander detached and moved to a lower orbit. Unfortunately, the 1471 kg rover crash crashed due to a computer glitch. During the landing, the velocity was supposed to be changed from 1683 to 146 m/s. However, the capsule flew faster than expected, and thus the landing was hard. Even though the landing was unsuccessful, it impacted close to the predicted landing site. The lander and rover were destroyed upon impact.
Operator: JAXA
Target: Moon
Landing date: November 2022
Status: Completed, failed
OMOTENASHI is one of the CubeSats flying onboard the Artemis 1 mission to the moon. The objective of OMOTENASHI is to demonstrate low-cost landing techniques for the moon. After separation, the satellite will spin up and ignite a small solid rocket motor. The burn will last for about 15 to 20 seconds. It will then separate the lander from the motor and inflate a 50cm airbag. This airbag ensures a safe landing. The final free-fall is about 100 meters and the final impact will be between 20 and 30 m/s.
After the successful launch in November 2022, the satellite was separated from the Orion space craft. Unfortunately, the team on the ground was not able to establish communications with the lander and were thus not able to start the landing sequence. The satellite remains in Lunar orbit.
Render of the OMOTENASHI lander
Operator: ISpace
Target: Moon
Landing date: April 2023 (First flight)
Status: Operational - in test phase
The Hakuto-R lander has a long history starting in the days of the Google Lunar X Prize to kickstart the moon landers in 2007. Even though the Hakuto lander did not reach a flight-ready state during the competition it managed to fly in November 2022. This launcher included the Rashid rover, the first moon rover of the UAE
Render of the Hakuto-R lander
The table below shows the first moon landing attempts starting in 1958. As the moon has no atmosphere all of them used some form of propulsive deceleration if needed. From the table, it can be seen that the first landers used a much simpler impact strategy. This means the kinetic energy upon touchdown is higher, but the capsule is designed to handle this. This overview only contains missions that attempted a lunar landing and not failed missions that never started the landing operation.
Mission | Nationality | Year | Landing system | Status |
Luna 1 | Soviet Union | 1959 | Impactor | Failure - Did not impact, made the first fly by of the moon |
Luna 2 | Soviet Union | 1959 | Impactor | Succesfull |
Ranger 3 | USA | 1962 | Impactor | Failure - Guidance problem |
Ranger 4 | USA | 1962 | Impactor | Failure - Did not deploy solar panels |
Ranger 5 | USA | 1962 | Impactor | Failure - Solar panels shut down by accident |
Ranger 6 | USA | 1964 | Impactor | Succesfull impact, did not return science data |
Ranger 7 | USA | 1964 | Impactor | Succesfull |
Ranger 8 | USA | 1964 | Impactor | Succesfull |
Ranger 9 | USA | 1965 | Impactor | Succesfull |
Luna 5 | Soviet Union | 1965 | Lander | Failure - Hard landing |
Luna 6 | Soviet Union | 1965 | Lander | Failure - Guidance error, became a fly by |
Luna 7 | Soviet Union | 1965 | Lander | Failure - Hard landing |
Luna 8 | Soviet Union | 1965 | Lander | Failure - Landing system failure |
Luna 9 | Soviet Union | 1966 | Lander | Succesfull |
Surveyor 1 | USA | 1966 | Lander | Succesfull |
Surveyor 2 | USA | 1966 | Lander | Failure - Lost in transit |
Luna 13 | Soviet Union | 1966 | Lander | Succesfull |
Surveyor 3 | USA | 1967 | Lander | Succesfull |
Surveyor 4 | USA | 1967 | Lander | Failure - Loss of contact |
Surveyor 5 | USA | 1967 | Lander | Succesfull |
Surveyor 6 | USA | 1967 | Lander | Succesfull |
Surveyor 7 | USA | 1968 | Lander | Succesfull |
Zond 4 | Soviet Union | 1968 | Lunar loop flight | Partial success |
Zond 5 | Soviet Union | 1968 | Lunar loop flight | Success - Rough landing |
Zond 6 | Soviet Union | 1968 | Lunar loop flight | Partial success |
Zond 7 | Soviet Union | 1969 | Lunar loop flight | Success |
Luna 15 | Soviet Union | 1969 | Lander | Failure - Landing |
Apollo 11 | USA | 1969 | Lander - Crewed | Success - First human landing on the moon |
Apollo 12 | USA | 1969 | Lander - Crewed | Success |
Zond 8 | Soviet Union | 1970 | Lunar Loop flight | Success |
Luna 16 | Soviet Union | 1970 | Sample return | Success |
Luna 17 | Soviet Union | 1970 | Lander - Rover | Success - First rover |
Luna 18 | Soviet Union | 1970 | Sample return | Failure - Landing |
Apollo 14 | USA | 1971 | Lander - Crewed | Success |
Apollo 15 | USA | 1971 | Lander - Crewed | Success |
Apollo 16 | USA | 1972 | Lander - Crewed | Success |
Luna 20 | Soviet Union | 1972 | Sample return | Success |
Luna 21 | Soviet Union | 1972 | Lander - Rover | Success |
Apollo 17 | USA | 1972 | Lander - Crewed | Success |
Luna 23 | Soviet Union | 1974 | Sample return | Failure |
Luna 24 | Soviet Union | 1976 | Sample return | Success |
Chang'e 3 + Yuto | China | 2013 | Lander - Rover | Success |
Chang'e 4 + Yutu-2 | China | 2019 | Lander - Rover | Success |
Beresheet | Israel | 2019 | Lander | Failure - Landing |
Vikram lander | India | 2019 | Lander | Failure - Landing |
Chang'e 5 | China | 2020 | Sample return | Success |
OMOTENASHI | Japan | 2022 | Lander | Failed after separation |
Hakuto-R M1 | ISpace | 2022 | Propulsive landing | In progress |
Hakuto-R M2 | ISpace | 2023 | Propulsive landing | Planned |
v0.2 - 25-04-2020