On July 21, 1969 (IST), NASA’s Apollo 11 mission made history as Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. More than five decades la…
1/6More than five decades after the first Moon landing, only five countries have achieved successful soft landings on the lunar surface. Here’s a look at the nations that reached this historic milestone.
2/61. Soviet Union (USSR) (7 successful landings) | Luna 9 (1966), Luna 13 (1966), Luna 16 (1970), Luna 17 (1970), Luna 20 (1972), Luna 21 (1973), Luna 24 (1976) | The Soviet Union achieved the world’s first successful soft landing on the Moon with Luna 9 in 1966. Its Luna programme also pioneered robotic sample-return missions and the first lunar rovers.
3/62. United States (14 successful landings) | Surveyor 1 (1966), Surveyor 3 (1967), Surveyor 5 (1967), Surveyor 6 (1967), Surveyor 7 (1968), Apollo 11 (1969), Apollo 12 (1969), Apollo 14 (1971), Apollo 15 (1971), Apollo 16 (1972), Apollo 17 (1972), Odysseus/IM-1 (2024), Blue Ghost Mission 1 (2025), Athena/IM-2 (2025) | The United States became the second country to achieve a successful soft landing on the Moon in 1966. It remains the only country to have landed humans on the lunar surface, with six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972.
4/63. China (3 successful landings) | Chang’e 3 (2013), Chang’e 4 (2019), Chang’e 5 (2020) | China became the third country to land on the Moon in 2013. Chang’e 4 became the first mission to achieve a soft landing on the Moon’s far side, while Chang’e 5 successfully returned lunar samples to Earth.
5/64. India (1 successful landing) | Chandrayaan-3 (2023) | India became the fourth country to achieve a successful soft landing on the Moon and the first to land near the lunar south pole, a region of great scientific interest because of its permanently shadowed craters.
6/65. Japan (1 successful landing) | SLIM (2024) | Japan became the fifth country to achieve a successful soft landing on the Moon with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), demonstrating one of the most precise lunar landings ever attempted.
