Moon landing

A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, including both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959.

In 1969, Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon. There were six crewed landings between 1969 and 1972 and numerous uncrewed landings. All crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the Apollo program, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. After Luna 24 in 1976, there were no soft landings— landings without significant damage—on the Moon until Chang'e 3 in 2013. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until January 2019, when Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the far side of the Moon.

Six government space agencies, Interkosmos, NASA, CNSA, DOS, JAXA and ESA, have reached the Moon with uncrewed missions. The Soviet Union (Interkosmos), the United States (NASA), China (CNSA), India (ISRO), and Japan (JAXA) are the only five nations to have successfully achieved soft landings.

The Soviet Union performed the first hard Moon landing, in which the spacecraft intentionally crashed into the Moon at high speed, with the Luna 2 spacecraft in 1959, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4.

Following their initial hard landings on the Moon, sixteen Soviet, U.S., Chinese and Indian spacecraft have used braking rockets (retrorockets) to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface. In 1966 the Soviet Union accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions. The U.S. followed with five Surveyor soft landings. China's ongoing Chang'e program has landed 4 times since 2013, achieving robotic soil sample return and the first landing on the far side of the Moon.

On 23 August 2023, ISRO successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 module in the lunar south pole region, making India the fourth nation to successfully complete a soft landing on the Moon. Chandrayaan-3 saw a successful soft landing of its Vikram lander and Pragyan rover at 6.04 pm IST (1234 GMT), marking the first uncrewed soft landing in the little-explored region.

On 19 January 2024, JAXA successfully landed its SLIM lander, making Japan the fifth nation to successfully complete a soft landing.

Two organizations have attempted but failed to achieve soft landings: Israeli private space agency SpaceIL with their Beresheet spacecraft (2019), and Japanese company ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (2023).