Lunar landing

Lore & Background

The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 in 1959, a hard landing that intentionally crashed into the Moon at high speed. The United States duplicated this feat in 1962 with Ranger 4. The first soft landing—a landing without significant damage—was achieved by the Soviet Union's Luna 9 in 1966, which also took the first pictures from the lunar surface. The U.S. followed with five Surveyor soft landings. All crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the Apollo program, with the last departing in December 1972. A total of twelve astronauts landed on the Moon across six NASA missions, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 and ending with Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17.

Reader's Guide

Lunar landings represent a key milestone in space exploration, demonstrating the ability to reach and operate on another celestial body. The first uncrewed hard landing in 1959 and the first crewed landing in 1969 marked major technological and political achievements during the Space Race. After the Apollo program ended in 1972, no soft landings occurred until China's Chang'e 3 in 2013. Subsequent missions expanded capabilities: Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019; India's Chandrayaan-3 landed in the lunar south pole region in 2023; Japan's SLIM landed in 2024. Commercial landings began with Intuitive Machines' Odysseus in 2024, which landed at an angle, and Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost in 2025, the first fully successful commercial landing. These missions have advanced scientific knowledge, including mapping the Moon's internal structure through deliberate crashes of rocket stages.

From Impact to Touchdown: The Evolution of Lunar Landing

The story of reaching the Moon's surface began not with a gentle touchdown but with a deliberate crash. In 1959, the Soviet Luna 2 probe became the first human-made object to make contact with the lunar surface, slamming into the ground at high speed. The United States replicated this feat three years later with Ranger 4 in 1962. The true breakthrough came in 1966, when the Soviet Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions used retrorockets to brake their descent and settle onto the surface intact, capturing the first photographs ever taken from the Moon. America responded with five Surveyor soft landings of its own. Yet after the Soviet Luna 24 mission in 1976, the Moon fell silent—no spacecraft achieved a soft landing for nearly four decades. That drought ended in 2013 when China's Chang'e 3 touched down, and in 2019 Chang'e 4 accomplished something unprecedented: the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, a region no previous mission had ever reached. Until that moment, every successful soft landing in history had occurred on the near side.

Twelve Astronauts in Forty-One Months: The Apollo Crewed Era

Between July 1969 and December 1972, a remarkable window of human achievement opened and closed. Six NASA missions carried twelve astronauts to the Moon's surface, each pairing a commander and a pilot in a Lunar Module while a third crew member orbited above in the command module. The era opened on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the regolith during Apollo 11, and it closed on December 14, 1972, when Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt completed Apollo 17. Cernan holds the distinction of being the last human to step off the lunar surface. The entire span of crewed lunar exploration lasted just forty-one months—a brief, intense burst of activity that has not been repeated. All six missions were conducted exclusively under the Apollo program, making it the sole vehicle through which humanity has walked on another world. No other nation, agency, or program has ever sent a crewed spacecraft to land on the Moon, leaving the Apollo era as a singular chapter in the history of spaceflight.

The New Wave: Nations and Companies Return to the Moon

Since 2013, the Moon has seen a remarkable resurgence of uncrewed visitors. China's Chang'e program has landed four times, achieving robotic soil sample return and the historic far-side touchdown. On August 23, 2023, India's ISRO delivered its Chandrayaan-3 module to the lunar south pole region, making India the fourth nation to accomplish a soft landing. Just months later, on January 19, 2024, Japan's JAXA landed its SLIM probe, becoming the fifth nation to join this exclusive club. The commercial sector has also made its mark. In February 2024, Intuitive Machines' Odysseus became the first privately owned spacecraft to land on the Moon, though it broke a strut and settled at a 30-degree tilt. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost followed on March 2, 2025, achieving the first fully successful commercial landing near Mons Latreille in Mare Crisium, operating for fourteen days with ten NASA instruments. Not all attempts have succeeded: Israel's Beresheet in 2019 and ispace's Hakuto-R in 2023 both ended in failure, underscoring how unforgiving the lunar surface remains.

The Physics of Touching Down: Engineering Against Gravity

Landing on the Moon is fundamentally a problem of velocity. As a spacecraft approaches the lunar surface, gravity accelerates it downward, and the speed at impact typically reaches seventy to one hundred percent of the Moon's escape velocity of 2.38 kilometres per second. To survive, a vehicle must shed that entire velocity before contact. For a hard landing, the craft needs to slow to under 160 kilometres per hour and be ruggedized enough to absorb the shock. For a soft landing—the only option for human crews—speed must be reduced to essentially zero at the moment of touchdown. This deceleration, known as delta-v, is almost always provided by retrorockets carried aboard the spacecraft from launch. The Soviet Luna 2 in 1959 and the American Ranger 4 in 1962 demonstrated that hard landings were achievable, but the first soft landings did not arrive until 1966. A rare exception to the rocket requirement exists on Saturn's moon Titan, where a thick atmosphere allows lighter entry techniques. Even during the Apollo program, spent rocket stages and Lunar Module ascent stages were deliberately crashed into the surface to generate seismic data, proving that controlled impacts remain a valuable scientific tool.

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