On Saturday, Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon, just two days before its planned landing attempt. This is just one in a long history of moon impacts and hard landings, both intentional and unintentional, dating back to 1959 when the Soviet Union’s Luna-2 became the first probe to hit the moon.
Upcoming missions, such as India’s Chandrayaan-3, will attempt to land on the moon in the coming months, adding to the list of crash attempts.
An image taken on Sunday by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft in lunar orbit.
ISRO
64 Years of Moon Crashes
Seven space programs and one private company, including the Soviet Union, United States, Japan, European Space Agency, India, China, Israel, and Ispace, have experienced hard landings on the moon. The map below shows the crash locations.
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.
Moon crashes, intentional or not, have provided valuable lessons for space agencies. They have revealed design flaws, software glitches, and exposed materials for future study.
India’s Last Attempt
On September 7, 2019, India’s Chandrayaan-2 lander lost communication while descending towards its planned landing site near the moon’s south pole. Despite a subsequent search by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the lander named Vikram could not be located.
A map of the moon’s south polar region, showing elevation in false color.
The New York Times; Map data from NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center and Arizona State Univ.
Months later, a bright speck was discovered in a publicly available NASA image, which turned out to be debris from Vikram’s impact.
A composite image highlighting recent changes on the lunar surface.
NASA; Goddard Space Flight Center; Arizona State Univ.
Future Missions
Japan plans to launch the SLIM mission to the moon on August 26, where it will orbit and attempt a landing near Shioli Crater. Additionally, several companies, such as Ispace, Houston’s Intuitive Machines, and Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology, are working towards achieving the first private lunar landing. Ispace faced a crash during its Hakuto-R Mission 1 in April 2022. Different missions are also expected to be launched in the near future.
An illustration of Japan’s SLIM lander.
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Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
