A Short History of Spacecraft Landings on the Moon

01Many years have passed since the first spacecraft landed on the moon in 1966.

02From then until now, there have been many additional attempts, with some succeeding and others failing.

03Here is a short history of some of these attempts.

04The Soviet Union's Luna 9 spacecraft was the first to land on the moon.

05It touched down on the lunar surface in 1966.

06The landing came after several other Soviet spacecraft either did not reach the moon or crashed on the surface.

07The American Space Agency, NASA, says Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to carry out a soft landing on the moon.

08It was also the first to send photographic data from the moon's surface to Earth.

09Luna 9's landing proved the lunar surface could support the weight of a lander and that an object would not sink into a loose layer of dust, as some models predicted, NASA said.

10In May 1966, the United States followed with its Surveyor 1 mission.

11NASA describes this effort as the first of a series of seven robotic spacecraft sent to the moon to gather data in preparation for NASA's Apollo missions.

12The successful soft landing of Surveyor 1 was one of the great successes of NASA's early lunar and interplanetary program.

13Both the U.S.

14and Soviet Union had other successful robotic landings.

15Next, the countries aimed to be the first to land humans on the moon.

16In 1969, NASA successfully landed Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.

17The U.S.

18Apollo program sent 12 astronauts to explore the moon over six missions.

19Apollo 17 was the last in 1972.

20The U.S.

21is still the only country to land humans on the moon.

22NASA officials say the agency's Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface, possibly by the end of 2026.

23In 2013, China became the third country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon.

24China landed an exploring vehicle, or rover, named U-2 that year.

25China followed with the U-2-2 rover in 2019, this time touching down on the moon's unexplored far side.

26In 2020, China successfully returned samples of rock and dirt collected by the rovers.

27The mission returned about 1.7 kilograms of lunar material collected from the near side of the moon.

28Then, in 2024, another mission returned rock and soil samples from the less-explored far side of the moon.

29China has said it aims to land its astronauts on the moon by 2030.

30In 2023, Russia tried its first moon landing in nearly 50 years.

31The Luna-25 spacecraft was attempting to land near the lunar south pole.

32But it is believed to have crash-landed on the moon's surface.

33The country's last effort before that, Luna-24 in 1976, landed successfully and returned moon rocks to Earth.

34After its first lander crashed into the moon in 2019, India made its second attempt in 2023.

35The country successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the lunar surface.

36The mission made India the fourth nation to complete a moon landing.

37In January 2024, Japan became the fifth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon.

38But the slim spacecraft landed upside down.

39This caused some power and communication problems.

40But the lander was able to operate for a short time.

41I'm Brian Lynn.