Lunar Missions

Luna 9 achieved the first survivable soft landing on the Moon. Launched on 31 January 1966, it reached Oceanus Procellarum on 3 February 1966, ejecting a small sealed capsule that came to rest on the surface and unfolded its petal-like covers.

It transmitted the first photographs ever taken from the surface of the Moon — panoramas showing nearby rocks and soil. Crucially, the images proved the ground was firm enough to bear a spacecraft, settling fears that a lander might sink into deep dust.

Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, travel to the Moon and circle it. Launched on 21 December 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders made ten orbits of the Moon before returning home.

During a Christmas Eve broadcast the crew read from the Book of Genesis to a vast television audience, and Anders captured 'Earthrise' — the now-iconic photograph of Earth rising above the lunar horizon. The mission returned safely on 27 December 1968 and proved the systems and navigation needed for a landing.

Apollo 11 carried the first humans to the surface of the Moon. Launched atop a Saturn V on 16 July 1969, the lunar module Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on 20 July 1969 while Michael Collins orbited overhead in the command module.

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface with the words 'one small step for man,' followed by Buzz Aldrin. The pair spent about two and a half hours outside, collecting some 21.5 kg of rock and soil and planting the US flag, before lifting off to rejoin Collins and splash down safely on 24 July 1969.

Luna 16 was the first robotic mission to bring a sample of the Moon back to Earth. Launched on 12 September 1970, it landed in Mare Fecunditatis (the Sea of Fertility) on 20 September 1970 and used a drill to collect about 101 grams of lunar soil.

An ascent stage then lifted off from the surface and returned the sealed sample capsule to Earth on 24 September 1970. It showed that automated sample return was possible, providing scientists with Moon material without a crew.

Luna 17 delivered Lunokhod 1, the first wheeled vehicle to rove across another world. The lander touched down in Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) on 17 November 1970 and rolled the rover down onto the surface via ramps.

Driven by a team on Earth, the eight-wheeled rover operated for about ten months — far beyond its planned life — travelling more than 10 km, returning tens of thousands of images and analysing the soil. It ran on solar power by day and was kept warm through the frigid lunar night by a radioactive heat source.

Apollo 17 was the final crewed mission to the Moon. Launched on 7 December 1972, it landed in the Taurus–Littrow valley on 11 December 1972, chosen for its mix of ancient highlands and possible young volcanic material.

Commander Gene Cernan and geologist Harrison Schmitt — the only professional scientist to walk on the Moon — spent about three days on the surface, driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle and collecting roughly 111 kg of samples, including the famous 'orange soil.' Cernan was the last person to stand on the Moon in the twentieth century.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the Moon in June 2009 and has been mapping it ever since, making it one of the most productive lunar missions ever flown. It was built to scout the surface for future exploration and to study the Moon in unprecedented detail.

Its cameras have imaged the entire Moon — including the Apollo landing sites, where the descent stages and astronaut tracks are visible — while its laser altimeter built precise global topography and other instruments probed the permanently shadowed polar craters that trap ice. Its data underpins planning for the Artemis program.

Chang'e 4 made the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the Moon, touching down in Von Kármán crater within the vast South Pole–Aitken basin in January 2019. Because the far side never faces Earth, the mission relies on the Queqiao relay satellite, stationed beyond the Moon, to pass signals home.

The mission deployed the Yutu-2 rover, which has become the longest-operating rover on the Moon, studying the layered subsurface and the unusual geology of the far side far beyond its original design life.

Chandrayaan-3 made India the fourth nation to soft-land on the Moon and the first to touch down in the south-polar region. Launched on 14 July 2023, its Vikram lander set down near 69° south on 23 August 2023 — a triumphant follow-up after the Chandrayaan-2 lander was lost in 2019.

The lander released the small Pragyan rover, which studied the regolith and confirmed the presence of sulfur and other elements near the pole. Both operated through a single lunar day of roughly two weeks and, as planned for the short mission, did not reawaken after the deep cold of the lunar night.

Artemis I was the uncrewed maiden flight of NASA's Artemis program, launched on 16 November 2022. It was the first flight of the powerful Space Launch System rocket and the first time the Orion crew capsule flew beyond the Moon.

Orion travelled into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon, venturing farther from Earth than any spacecraft built to carry humans had gone before, then returned for a Pacific splashdown on 11 December 2022. The successful test cleared the way for the crewed Artemis flights to follow.

Artemis II was the first crewed flight of NASA's Artemis program and the first mission to carry people to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Space Launch System lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center on 1 April 2026 at 6:35 p.m. EDT with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency aboard.

Orion did not enter lunar orbit: it followed a free-return path that swung around the Moon on 6 April, passing about 4,067 miles (6,500 km) above the surface and reaching 252,756 miles (roughly 406,800 km) from Earth — farther than any crew had travelled before, beating the record Apollo 13 set in 1970. The crew returned more than 7,000 images of the Moon and watched it eclipse the Sun from Orion's windows.

After nearly ten days and 695,081 miles of flight, Orion splashed down in the Pacific off San Diego on 10 April 2026 at 5:07 p.m. PDT, where a joint NASA and US Navy team recovered the crew. NASA has said the flight clears the way for assembling the missions that follow.