Racing to Land, or Crash, on the Moon

By Jonathan CorumUpdated January 19, 2024

Japan’s First Soft Landing

Japan launched the SLIM mission to the moon in September. On Friday, the uncrewed spacecraft successfully landed near Shioli Crater, though its solar arrays are not generating power. Japan is the fifth nation to make a soft landing on the moon.

64 Years of Moon Crashes

Robotic spacecraft have made a series of impacts, belly flops and hard landings — some intentional, others unplanned — since 1959, when the Soviet Union’s Luna-2 became the first probe to hit the moon.

Seven space programs and one private company have made hard landings on the moon: the Soviet Union, United States, Japan, European Space Agency, India, China, Israel and Ispace. Crash locations are shown on the map below. (SLIM’s landing site is also shown, for comparison.)

Moon imagery from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera via NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Some types of crashes, including used rocket engines and empty Apollo lunar modules, are not shown. Some locations are approximate, and other crash locations have not been determined.

Some crashes were setbacks. Others were intentional, marking the end of a successful mission. Whatever the cause, space agencies have learned from each collision. Crashes can reveal design flaws or software glitches, and expose material under the lunar surface for future study.

Russia’s Last Attempt

Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon and “ceased its existence” on Aug. 19, 2023, two days before a planned landing attempt.

India’s First Soft Landing

India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission placed a lander and rover on the moon on Aug. 23, 2023, four years after the Chandrayaan-2 lander crashed during descent. The lander and rover returned images for almost two weeks, from lunar sunrise to sunset.

India is the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the moon, and the first to safely touch down in the moon’s southern polar region.

During a previous mission, India’s Chandrayaan-2 lander lost communications with Earth as it descended toward a planned landing site near the moon’s south pole on Sept. 7, 2019.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the area ten days later but was unable to locate the lander, known as Vikram.

Months later, an Indian space enthusiast spotted a bright speck in a publicly available NASA image, which turned out to be spacecraft debris from Vikram’s impact.

Future Missions

Several companies are also competing to achieve the first private lunar landing. Japan’s Ispace launched the Hakuto-R Mission 1 spacecraft in 2022, but it crashed while landing in April.

Houston’s Intuitive Machines and Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology may launch lunar missions by the end of the year.

Crewed Missions

NASA has named four astronauts for the Artemis II mission that could orbit the moon in 2025. Both NASA and China hope to land astronauts by 2030, putting humans on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.