How many countries have landed on the Moon?
Landing on the Moon is not an easy task as one recent attempt proved all too well. Only a handful of countries have been successful at pulling off the feat.
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union took place in several arenas but one that caught the imagination of the entire world was the competition in space. While the Soviets achieved many firsts in the space race, including an unmanned landing on the Moon in, it was the historic 20 July 1969 touchdown of the Apollo 11 Eagle lander with two astronauts aboard, Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, that achieved the most sought-after goal.
A new space race is afoot to explore the Moon with many more players. More than six decades since the first lunar landing, better said impact, there have been seven nations and one private company that have gotten their spacecrafts to the surface of the Moon. However, only five nations have managed to make a soft landing on the suface.
How many countries have landed on the Moon?
So far, in order of successful soft moon landings are the Soviet Union (1966), the United States (1966), China (2013), India (2023) and Japan (2024). Either by accident or deliberately European Space Agency, Israel and Ispace have crashed a spacecraft on the Moon. You can check out a graphic of lunar crash sites at The Washington Post.
Japan was able to make a “soft” landing with their SLIM, which is short for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, moon lander and two palm-sized Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2). The landing didn’t go quite as planned though, as SLIM ended up upside down on the surface of our nearest celestial body.
That said, the Japanese space agency JAXA achieved its main goal, which was a precision “pinpoint landing”. SLIM was off its mark by at most 10 meters (about 33 feet) and possibly less than half that. Even if it was at the maximum deviance from the target site, that would be within a tenth of the required distance to claim success. Most landing targets give a margin of several square miles.
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