India on the Moon: see countries that arrived before – 08/23/2023 – Science

Before the landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission on the Moon this Wednesday (23), which made India the fourth country to accomplish the feat, the satellite has already been flown over, reached, photographed and orbited by missions of different nationalities since 1959. Indian initiative is the first to make a descent to the lunar south pole, a region considered more difficult for landings than the equatorial belt.

The first country to land on the Moon was Russia (then the Soviet Union), in 1966, with the Luna 9 mission. Three months later, the US arrived with Surveyor 1, but still without a crew. The Americans would put the first humans to walk on the satellite’s soil in the Apollo 11 mission, in 1969.

The third country to land on the satellite was China, in 2013, updating the feat after a 37-year hiatus.

See how countries reached the Moon, from flybys to landings on the satellite’s surface, in some missions.

RUSSIA/SOVIET UNION

The first Soviet missions revealed hitherto unpublished images of the satellite. Earlier, the Luna 2 probe had been launched to impact the lunar soil and achieved the feat on September 12, 1959.

Its successor, Luna 3, was able to glimpse the far side of the Moon, which cannot be seen from Earth because of the synchronization between the satellite’s rotation and translation movements. Earlier, Luna 2 had reached the surface. In 1966, the Luna 9 mission made the first landing on the satellite.

U.S

Months after the Soviet victory with the landing of Luna 9, the US landed without a crew with Surveyor 1. The Americans would take the lead in the Cold War space race two years later, with the first manned mission to orbit the satellite, the Apollo 8. The following year, they made the first manned landing, with Apollo 11.

CHINA

China launched probes into lunar orbit in 2007 and would make its first landing with a probe that took a robotic rover to the satellite in 2013. It was the first soft landing since 1976.

JAPAN

After the decline of interest in lunar exploration, the Japanese returned to heat up the subject by sending a satellite to lunar orbit, the Hiten spacecraft, with a small orbiter, the Hagoromo, in 1990, but with few scientific results.

In April 2023, an ispace mission failed in an attempt to make the first private landing on the moon. A miscalculation left the Hakuto-R module without fuel.

EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Gathered at the European Space Agency (ESA), European countries launched the SMART-1 satellite in 2003. The equipment orbited the Moon until the end of the mission, on September 3, 2006, when the agency commanded the collision of the satellite on the lunar surface.