# 2.3 Missions to the Moon

David A. Rothery Teach Yourself Planets, Chapter 6, pp. 66-75, Hodder Education, 2000, 2003.

Copyright © David Rothery

The Moon was the first extraterrestrial target for space missions. Probes have been directed towards it since almost the very dawn of the space age (see below), and it was the main focus of the 1960s-1970s 'space race' between the USA and the then Soviet Union. In the end, only NASA attempted to put people on the Moon, and the six successful Apollo landings brought back a total of 382 kg of lunar rocks. These samples, together with 0.3 kg collected from other sites by unmanned Soviet sample return missions, are what has enabled us to calibrate the cratering timescale and were immensely important in developing our current level of understanding of the Moon's origin and history.

The budget for the Apollo programme was terminated in 1972, after which there was little further effort in lunar exploration until 1994 when the Clementine probe went into lunar orbit and collected a wealth of previously unknown information about the topography, crustal thickness, and variations in crustal composition across the whole lunar globe (Plate 2 [image can be found at: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon.html]). This was followed in 1998 by another orbiter, Lunar Prospector, which provided even more insights and discoveries, such as the existence of ice dispersed within the regolith at both poles. The European Space Agency and Japan each plan lunar missions for the early years of the twenty-first century.

## some of the successful and anticipated missions to the Moon[.] Luna missions were launched by the Soviet Union, the others are NASA missions unless specified

Name | Description | Date
--- | --- | ---
Luna 2 | impact with surface | Sept. 1959
Luna 3 | fly-by, images of far side | Oct. 1959
Rangers 7-9 | images at close range prior to impact | Mar. 1965-July 1972
Luna 9 | unmanned landing, pictures from surface | Feb. 1966
Luna 10 | first probe to orbit Moon | Apr. 1966
Surveyor 1, 3, 5-7 | unmanned landings, images from surface | June 1966-Jan. 1968
Lunar Orbiter 1-5 | images from orbit | Aug. 1966-Aug. 1967
Luna 11-12 | images from orbit | Aug.-Oct.1966
Apollo 8 | first manned orbits | Dec. 1968
Apollo 11, 12, 14-17 | manned landings, geological and geophysical studies, sample return | July 1969-Dec. 1972
Luna 16, 20, 24 | unmanned sample returns | Sept. 1970-Aug. 1976
Luna 17, 21 | Lunokhod unmanned surface rovers | Nov. 1970, Jan. 1973
Galileo | fly-by en route to Jupiter, compositional mapping | Dec. 1992
Clementine | high resolution multispectral imaging and laser altimetry from orbit | Jan-Mar. 1994
Lunar Prospector | geophysical and geochemical mapping from orbit | Jan. 1998-July 1999
SMART 1 | European Space Agency lunar orbiter | 2003
Lunar A | Japanese lunar orbiter and seismometers | 2003 [cancelled]
Selene 1 | Japanese lunar orbiter and lander | 2004 [actual launch, 2007]

David A. Rothery, Teach Yourself Planets, p. 68, Hodder Education, 2000, 2003. Copyright © David Rothery

OpenLearn - The Moon
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.