This photo shows mockups of Luna-9, the first spacecraft to successfully land on the Moon. It was launched by the then-USSR in 1966 and landed in the flat plains of Oceanus Procellarum on Feb 3rd. When it landed, four petal-like appendages opened up to stabilize it, and four spring-loaded antennae were deployed for radio communications.
It wasn’t a terribly sophisticated lander. It had no roving capabilities and could only observe from where it landed. It had a mass of 99 kg (218 lb) and a diameter of 58 cm (23 in). It needed a landing bag to survive the impact speed of over 54 kph (34 mph). The lander was a hermetically sealed container with radio equipment, a program timing device, heat control systems, scientific apparatus, power sources, and an analog television camera. It provided rudimentary data about temperature and radiation, but perhaps its greatest achievement was the first ever transmission of an (albeit crude and grainy) image of the lunar landscape. The horizon is 1.4 km (0.87 miles) away:
Not to diminish Luna-9’s achievements, but Luna-2 was the first spacecraft to reach the Moon. It impacted the Moon’s surface on 13 September, 1959. But it was not a soft landing. It was designed to crash into the Moon, not to land gently. The mission was more like a test to see if a “bullet” could hit a moving target.
NASA’s Ranger 4 was the first U.S. spacecraft to reach the Moon on April 23, 1962. It was designed to transmit pictures during descent and to rough-land a capsule carrying a seismometer and other instruments. A computer problem prevented it from performing any operations. It crashed on the Moon’s far side. The first U.S. spacecraft to make a successful soft landing was Surveyor 1 on June 2, 1966.
Fast forward to 2025. There are now five countries that have achieved soft landings on the Moon: United States, the former Soviet Union (now Russia), China, India, and Japan. We also have some private companies in on the game: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander became the first private company to achieve a fully successful soft landing on the Moon on March 2, 2025. Prior to Firefly’s success, Intuitive Machines‘ Odysseus lander had also reached the Moon on February 22, 2024, but it tipped over because it landed on a slope. While it was a historic achievement, it wasn’t considered a successful soft landing.
Whether SpaceX will be the next is a matter of question. Their Starship is part of NASA’s Project Artemis to return humans to the Moon. SpaceX is behind schedule to demonstrate their Starship HLS (human landing system), and several other private companies are entering that race.
Here’s why these mission are so technologically challenging. You can’t just point a rocket at the Moon and push the launch button. It takes about three days to get to the Moon with current technology. In three days, the Moon will move 1.1 million km (69,000 miles) along its orbit around Earth — so you need to aim the rocket at the place the Moon will be in three days, effectively “leading the target.”
The mission is further complicated by the need for a few low earth orbits (LEO) — known as “parking orbits” —to check out systems after launch. When all systems are go, next comes the trans-lunar injection (TLI). This is a precisely timed ignition of the thrusters, with a calculated thrust and burn time to achieve the needed Δv.
When you do reach the Moon, the reverse process is necessary — with the additional complication of having no atmosphere to slow you down. Parachutes are dead weight, and splashdowns are not an option. You need rockets to slow the craft down before hitting the surface, and of course that requires more fuel. Here’s a nice graphic showing the entire process:
The final difficulty is that the surface you’re landing on is irregular and strewn with boulder and craters — even if you manage to land on horizontal terrain. So it’s not easy to do a soft landing on the Moon, but I suspect we’ll see some amazing missions before the end of the decade. Robots and humans will return to the Moon. The next space race is on.
Next Week in Sky Lights ⇒ Sprites