The Exploration of the Moon started when the Space Race/Space Age (1957 - 1969/1976) heated up and the Soviet Union and the United States both raced to the moon and later other planets. With the Space Race the world and technology changed, especially the interest of the moon.
The Soviet Union was the first country to land on the moon ( Without any Humans ) and the United States was behind in the space race but the United States was the first one to land with a human on the moon which started the exploration. More Satellites and Probes during and after the space race/space age were sent to explore the rocky surface and during the robots and human missions that successfully landed on the moon they found that the moon had craters and had a hard surface. But they also found dead volcanoes, and lava flowing through areas on the moon.
Spacecraft missions to the Moon |
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Active missions | | Orbiters |
- THEMIS satellites, renamed ARTEMIS
- CAPSTONE
- Danuri
- Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
- Queqiao relay satellite (relay satellite at L2)
- Queqiao-2 relay satellite
- Tiandu-1
- Tiandu-2
- ICUBE-Q
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| Landers | |
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| Rovers | |
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| Flybys | |
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Past missions | | Crewed landings | |
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| Orbiters | |
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| Impactors |
- LCROSS
- Luna 2
- Moon Impact Probe
- Ranger 4
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
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| Landers | |
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| Rovers | |
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| Sample return | |
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| Failed landings | |
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| Flybys | |
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Planned missions | | Artemis | |
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| CLPS |
- Blue Moon Pathfinder (2025)
- Griffin M1 (2025)
- IM-3 (2026)
- Blue Ghost Mission 2
- Blue Ghost Mission 3 (2026)
- IM-4
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| Luna-Glob |
- Luna 26 (2027)
- Luna 27 (2028)
- Luna 28 (2030)
- Luna 29 (2030s)
- Luna 30 (2030s)
- Luna 31 (2030s)
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| CLEP |
- Chang'e 7 (2026)
- Chang'e 8 (2028)
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| Others |
- Beresheet 2 (2025)
- ispace M3 (2026)
- Lunar Pathfinder (2026)
- DESTINY+ (2028)
- Cislunar Explorers (2020s)
- CU-E3 (2020s)
- MoonRanger (2020s)
- International Lunar Research Station (late 2020s)
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Proposed missions | | Robotic |
- Lunar Polar Exploration Mission
- ALINA
- Artemis-7
- Blue Moon
- BOLAS
- Garatéa-L
- ISOCHRON
- LunaNet
- Lunar Crater Radio Telescope
- McCandless
- Moon Diver
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| Crewed |
- DSE-Alpha
- Boeing Lunar Lander
- Lockheed Martin Lunar Lander
- Lunar Orbital Station
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Exploration programs | |
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| Related |
- Colonization of the Moon
- Google Lunar X Prize
- List of lunar probes
- List of missions to the Moon
- List of artificial objects on the Moon
- List of species that have landed on the Moon
- Lunar resources
- Apollo 17 Moon mice
- Moon landing conspiracy theories
- Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings
- Apollo 11 anniversaries
- List of crewed lunar landers
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- Missions are ordered by launch date. Crewed missions are in italics.
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