Lunar Odysseys: All Moon Landings from Luna to Chandrayaan
Exploring the Remarkable History of lunar soft landings
India’s recent landing of the Chandrayaan-3 lander on the moon is all over the news nowadays. Even other space-faring countries like Russia, Japan, and the USA have been aiming for the moon recently. Only four countries have successfully managed to land on the moon so far including the USA, Russia, China, and the recent addition to the group: India. This shows that a soft landing on the moon is no small feat. Not all missions are designed to land on the moon. There are many types of moon missions like orbiter missions, impact missions, sample return missions, and lander missions, out of which only lander missions and sample return missions land on the moon. Out of more than one hundred and forty lunar missions launched so far, only twenty-two missions successfully landed on the moon including the six Apollo missions.
First-ever landing on the moon
The first mission to touch the lunar surface was Russia’s Luna-2 mission in 1959. However, this mission was not designed to soft-land on the moon. It was created to be an impact mission. The craft was intentionally meant only to crash onto the moon. The first-ever soft landing was done by the Luna-9 mission.
Luna missions
After the Luna 2, several other Luna missions were launched like orbiter, sample return, impact, and lander. For a few years after the Luna 2 mission, several other impact missions were executed successfully like Russia’s Luna 5 and Luna 6.
The first-ever soft landing on the moon was done by Russia’s Luna 9 which landed on the 3rd of February 1966. After this, several lunar orbiter missions were also launched like the Luna 10, Luna 11, and 12 etc.
Since 1970, five Russian lunar missions successfully landed on the moon. This includes The Luna 16, 17, 20, 21, and 24.
Luna 16 was the first-ever lunar mission to successfully return a sample from the moon to the Earth. Luna 20 and the Luna 24 were also successful in returning samples.
Luna 17 was the first to deploy a robotic rover onto the moon.
Luna 24 launched in 1976 was the last time Russia landed on the moon. The recent attempt at Luna 25 was not successful as the craft, unfortunately, crashed onto the moon.
The Ranger missions
After the success of Russia’s Luna 2 mission, the US also attempted several impact missions onto the moon called the ‘Ranger’ missions. There were a total of three successful ranger missions: the Ranger 7, Ranger 8, and Ranger 9. Even though they were designed to crash, they were still useful in transmitting important data about the moon in the few minutes before the crash.
The Surveyor missions
The American Surveyor 1 mission was the first American craft to soft-land on the moon. The mission landed on the 1st of June in 1966 less than four months after the successful Luna 9 soft landing.
After the success of the Surveyor 1, four other Surveyor missions landed on the moon: The Surveyor 3, 5, 6, and 7.
The Apollo missions
The first ever Apollo mission to land on the moon was the Legendary Apollo 11 which put a human on the moon for the first time.
The Apollo 11 mission was not the only manned landing on the moon, six Apollo missions have successfully landed humans on the moon including Apollo 11 all the way to Apollo 17 the only exception being for Apollo 13. Though these missions were successful, the names of the astronauts are not well known.
The Chang’e missions
The Chang’e missions launched by China are one of the recent soft landings on the moon. The first Chinese craft to land on the moon was the Chang’e 3 lander craft in 2013.
After the success of this mission, 2 other Chang’e missions have been launched by China: the Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 5. The Chang’e 5 was a sample return mission and it returned the samples back to the Earth in 2020.
The Chandrayaan missions
The Chandrayaan mission launched by India is another addition to this list. Chandrayaan 1 launched in 2008, was an orbiter mission, and the Chandrayaan 2 mission in 2019 that attempted to land on the moon crashed just before landing. The Chandrayaan 3 mission however successfully managed to soft land on the moon recently. This soft landing made history a few days ago on 23rd August 2023 and has put India among the top 4 countries to have soft-landed on the moon.
