Scroll or pinch to zoom today's real phase, live Drag to turn the Moon tap a flag or a symbol to find out more
Exactly as it looks tonight, oriented for your hemisphere
Live, right nowCalculating…
The real fraction of the Moon's near side lit by the Sun right now, computed from the same lunar theory driving the render above, not a canned image swapped in per phase name.
The Moon keeps the same face toward Earth, but not perfectly. Its tilted, slightly elliptical orbit lets us see a few degrees further round each edge over a month. This is that wobble, right now.
Detected from your timezone, then refined by a rough location lookup. From the southern hemisphere the Moon appears turned through 180 degrees, so the lit side falls on the opposite edge. Click to switch views and compare.
Colour: NASA LRO/LROC Relief: derived from NASA LOLA data seriouslyscientific.com
// Getting There
For most of human history the Moon was something to look at and wonder about. Then, in the space of a single decade, it became somewhere to go. What follows is every craft that has reached it, and what is meant to follow.
Twenty of these left something behind that is still sitting on the surface. Use Explore surface on the Moon above to turn it round and find them, including two on the far side that can never be seen from Earth.
USSR
The first object from Earth to touch another world. It was not a landing: Luna 2 hit the surface at roughly 3 km per second and was destroyed on impact, which was the whole plan.
USSR
Photographed the far side for the first time. Until these grainy images came back, no one had ever seen roughly 41 per cent of the Moon.
USSR
The first spacecraft to land intact on another world and send pictures back from the surface. It also settled an argument: the dust was firm enough to stand on.
NASA
America's first soft landing, four months after Luna 9, scouting the ground for Apollo.
NASA
The first people to leave Earth orbit and orbit another world. No landing, but this is the mission that brought back Earthrise.
NASA
Mare Tranquillitatis. Armstrong and Aldrin spent about two and a quarter hours outside. NASA places the touchdown at 0.67416 N, 23.47314 E, measured from orbit decades later.
NASA
Oceanus Procellarum. Landed close enough to Surveyor 3 for the crew to walk over and bring pieces of it home.
USSR
First robotic sample return: lunar soil brought back to Earth with nobody aboard.
USSR
Carried the first rover to work on another world, driven remotely from Earth by a five-person crew watching a slow television feed.
NASA
Fra Mauro, the site Apollo 13 never reached.
NASA
Hadley-Apennine. First mission to carry the lunar roving vehicle, which turned a walk of a few hundred metres into drives of kilometres.
NASA
Descartes Highlands, chosen to sample terrain quite unlike the dark maria.
NASA
Taurus-Littrow. The last crewed landing, and the only one to carry a professional geologist. Nobody has walked there since.
USSR
The last Soviet lunar lander. Nothing landed softly on the Moon again for 37 years.
CNSA, China
Ended the 37 year gap and made China the third nation to land softly on the Moon.
CNSA, China · far side
The first soft landing on the far side, in Von Karman crater. It needed a relay satellite to talk to Earth at all: from here, there is no line of sight home.
CNSA, China
Returned the first new lunar samples since 1976, from some of the youngest volcanic terrain on the Moon.
ISRO, India
Made India the fourth nation to land softly, and the first to reach the high southern latitudes, where the water ice is thought to be.
JAXA, Japan
Japan's first soft landing, aiming for pinpoint accuracy rather than a wide safe zone. It came down tilted, and survived anyway.
Intuitive Machines, USA
The first commercial soft landing, and the first American one since Apollo 17. It tipped over on touchdown but kept working.
CNSA, China · far side
First sample return from the far side, from the vast South Pole-Aitken basin. Nearly two kilograms of rock nobody on Earth had ever been able to reach.
Firefly Aerospace, USA
Mare Crisium, near the volcanic cone Mons Latreille. The first fully successful commercial landing, upright and operating.
Intuitive Machines, USA
Reached Mons Mouton, the southernmost landing ever attempted, but tipped on touchdown and could not recover.
NASA, with CSA
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen flew around the Moon and back on a ten day mission. They were the first people beyond low Earth orbit since 1972 and the first since the Apollo crews to see the far side with their own eyes.
CNSA, China
An orbiter, a lander, a rover and a hopping probe, aimed at the south pole near Shackleton crater. The hopper is the point: it is meant to get down into permanently shadowed craters where sunlight has not reached for billions of years, looking for water ice. It was already on the launch pad in August 2026 when the launch was called off; China said it couldn't fly in this year's window, and a tropical storm near the launch site is the likely reason.
ISRO, India
India's first attempt at a lunar sample return, which would make it the fourth nation to bring Moon rock home.
NASA
Not a landing. NASA restructured the campaign in February 2026: Artemis III now tests docking between Orion and the commercial landers in Earth orbit, and the landing moved to Artemis IV. Crew announced as Andre Douglas, Luca Parmitano, Randy Bresnik and Frank Rubio.
NASA
The one that lands. If it flies, it will be the first time anyone has walked on the Moon since December 1972, a gap of more than 55 years.
CNSA, China
A lander, rover and robot intended to test whether lunar material can be used for building, groundwork for a permanent research station.
Roscosmos, Russia
Two landers are reported: one for the south pole, one for the north, carrying instruments to drill into and analyse the regolith.
CMSA, China
China has stated a goal of putting people on the Moon before the end of the decade, which would make it the second nation ever to do so.
Dates and mission details are accurate at the time of writing. Lunar schedules move often, and planned missions in particular are targets rather than commitments. I keep an eye on this and update it as things change, but if you spot something out of date, please let me know.
// Points of Interest
Not every famous place on the Moon has a flag on it. Here are the craters, mountains and old lava seas that tell its story, plus four holes in the ground that may open into tunnels left by flowing lava. Each one is marked on the Moon above: use Explore surface and tap its symbol.
Holes where the roof of a lava tube may have fallen in. Japan's Kaguya orbiter found the first three, and NASA wants to land instruments at the Marius Hills pit to look inside.
Japan's Kaguya orbiter spotted this hole, about 65 m across, in 2009. Its radar later picked up echoes of what may be a lava tube about 50 km long, and in September 2026 NASA picked instruments called GIMLI to land here and find out.
Looking under the overhang, LRO, 2011. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University JAXA (opens in a new tab)
A hole about 100 m across and more than 100 m deep, 375 km from where Apollo 11 landed. In 2024 a fresh look at old LRO radar data found a cave passage leading off the bottom, at least tens of metres long.
Boulders on the floor, LRO, 2010. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University NASA Photojournal (opens in a new tab)
Kaguya found this far side hole first, about 130 m across. Boulders that fell when the roof caved in lie on its floor, and overhangs 10 to 20 m deep run under two of its walls.
Depths of Mare Ingenii, LRO, 2010. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University NASA Photojournal (opens in a new tab)
Most pits drop away on every side, but one end of this one has a slope of rubble running from the plain down to the floor, about 100 m below. It's the kind of ramp a rover might one day drive down.
The pit and its rubble ramp, LRO. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University LROC (opens in a new tab)From a crater young enough to still shine to one so close to the south pole that sunlight never reaches its floor.
Tycho's central peak rises about 2 km above the crater floor, with a boulder about 120 m wide near its summit. LRO caught it in June 2011 just after sunrise, when long shadows pick out every slope.
Tycho's central peak at sunrise, LRO, June 2011. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University NASA Science (opens in a new tab)
In November 1966 Lunar Orbiter 2 looked sideways into Copernicus from 46 km up, and people called the result the picture of the century. Until then nearly every photo of the Moon had looked straight down.
The picture of the century, Lunar Orbiter 2, 1966. NASA NASA Visualization Studio (opens in a new tab)
The brightest large crater on the Moon: it reflects nearly twice as much light as most of the surface, so you can pick it out with the naked eye. It's young, which is why it hasn't darkened yet.
The west wall seen sideways from 26 km up, LRO, 2011. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University LROC (opens in a new tab)
Shackleton sits almost exactly on the south pole, so sunlight never reaches its floor and it's cold enough to hold ice. ShadowCam, a camera 200 times more sensitive than LRO's, photographed the inside by the faint light bouncing off the sunlit ground nearby.
Shackleton, ShadowCam and LROC mosaic, 2023. NASA/KARI/ASU NASA (opens in a new tab)
Dark lava flooded this crater's floor, which is rare on the far side, so its pale central peak stands out like an island. Apollo 15 photographed it from 282 km up in 1971.
Tsiolkovskiy from Apollo 15, 1971. NASA NASA NSSDCA (opens in a new tab)The Moon's highest point, the mountains Apollo 15 landed beside, two vast impact basins and a pale swirl nobody can fully explain.
The highest point on the Moon stands 10,786 m above the Moon's average radius. It isn't a sharp peak: the ground rises at about 3 degrees, so you could walk to the top if you skirted the craters.
The summit in low sunlight, LRO, 2010. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University LROC (opens in a new tab)
These mountains rise 3 to 5 km above the plain beside them. Apollo 15 landed at their foot in 1971, between the peaks and the winding valley of Hadley Rille.
Over Mount Hadley to Hadley Rille, LRO, 2011. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University NASA (opens in a new tab)
This dark plain is old lava that filled a huge impact basin. Its flows are about 35 m thick, too thin to see unless the Sun is low and throws long shadows.
The edge of one lava flow, close up, LRO. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University LROC (opens in a new tab)
A bullseye of mountain rings, the outer one almost 900 km across. It sits on the Moon's western edge, so from Earth we only ever see it side on; Lunar Orbiter 4 photographed it whole in 1967.
The whole bullseye from LRO's wide angle camera. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University NASA APOD (opens in a new tab)
A pale swirl that looks painted on the dark lava, with no hill or hollow beneath it. It sits on a patch of magnetised rock, and NASA's Lunar Vertex rover is due to land there to work out how the two are linked.
Reiner Gamma from LRO's wide angle camera. NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio NASA Visualization Studio (opens in a new tab)// Watch
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