Scroll or pinch to zoom ✦ today's real phase, live Drag to turn the Moon ✦ tap a marker to read about the mission
Colour: NASA LRO/LROC ✦ Relief: derived from NASA LOLA data ✦ seriouslyscientific.com
// Think It Through
Space puzzles to try
// Getting There
Every journey to the Moon
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.
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13 September 1959
Luna 2
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.
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7 October 1959
Luna 3
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.
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3 February 1966
Luna 9
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.
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2 June 1966
Surveyor 1
NASA
America's first soft landing, four months after Luna 9, scouting the ground for Apollo.
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24 December 1968
Apollo 8
NASA
The first people to leave Earth orbit and orbit another world. No landing, but this is the mission that brought back Earthrise.
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20 July 1969
Apollo 11
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.
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19 November 1969
Apollo 12
NASA
Oceanus Procellarum. Landed close enough to Surveyor 3 for the crew to walk over and bring pieces of it home.
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20 September 1970
Luna 16
USSR
First robotic sample return: lunar soil brought back to Earth with nobody aboard.
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17 November 1970
Luna 17, Lunokhod 1
USSR
Carried the first rover to work on another world, driven remotely from Earth by a five-person crew watching a slow television feed.
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5 February 1971
Apollo 14
NASA
Fra Mauro, the site Apollo 13 never reached.
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30 July 1971
Apollo 15
NASA
Hadley-Apennine. First mission to carry the lunar roving vehicle, which turned a walk of a few hundred metres into drives of kilometres.
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21 April 1972
Apollo 16
NASA
Descartes Highlands, chosen to sample terrain quite unlike the dark maria.
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11 December 1972
Apollo 17
NASA
Taurus-Littrow. The last crewed landing, and the only one to carry a professional geologist. Nobody has walked there since.
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18 August 1976
Luna 24
USSR
The last Soviet lunar lander. Nothing landed softly on the Moon again for 37 years.
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14 December 2013
Chang'e 3
CNSA, China
Ended the 37 year gap and made China the third nation to land softly on the Moon.
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3 January 2019
Chang'e 4
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.
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1 December 2020
Chang'e 5
CNSA, China
Returned the first new lunar samples since 1976, from some of the youngest volcanic terrain on the Moon.
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23 August 2023
Chandrayaan-3
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.
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19 January 2024
SLIM
JAXA, Japan
Japan's first soft landing, aiming for pinpoint accuracy rather than a wide safe zone. It came down tilted, and survived anyway.
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22 February 2024
IM-1 Odysseus
Intuitive Machines, USA
The first commercial soft landing, and the first American one since Apollo 17. It tipped over on touchdown but kept working.
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1 June 2024
Chang'e 6
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.
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2 March 2025
Blue Ghost Mission 1
Firefly Aerospace, USA
Mare Crisium, near the volcanic cone Mons Latreille. The first fully successful commercial landing, upright and operating.
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6 March 2025
IM-2 Athena
Intuitive Machines, USA
Reached Mons Mouton, the southernmost landing ever attempted, but tipped on touchdown and could not recover.
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1 April 2026
Artemis II
NASA, with CSA
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen flew around the Moon and back on a ten day mission. The first people beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, and the first ever to see the far side with their own eyes since Apollo.
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Planned, 2026
Chang'e 7
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.
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Planned, 2027 to 2028
Chandrayaan-4
ISRO, India
India's first attempt at a lunar sample return, which would make it the fourth nation to bring Moon rock home.
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Planned, 2027
Artemis III
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.
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Planned, no earlier than 2028
Artemis IV
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.
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Planned, 2028 to 2029
Chang'e 8
CNSA, China
A lander, rover and robot intended to test whether lunar material can be used for building, groundwork for a permanent research station.
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Planned, 2029 to 2030
Luna 27
Roscosmos, Russia
Two landers are reported: one for the south pole, one for the north, carrying instruments to drill into and analyse the regolith.
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Planned, by 2030
Crewed Chinese landing
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.