A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2023, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 1972 during the United States' Apollo Program. Several robotic landers have reached the surface, and some have returned samples to Earth.
Astrobotic Technology inc., commonly referred to as Astrobotic is an American private company that is developing space robotics technology for lunar and planetary missions. It was founded in 2007 by Carnegie Mellon professor Red Whittaker and his associates with the goal of winning the Google Lunar X Prize. The company is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their first launch occurred on January 8, 2024, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The launch carried the company's Peregrine lunar lander on board the first flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket from Florida's Space Force Station LC-41. The mission was unable to reach the Moon for a soft or hard landing. On June 11, 2020, Astrobotic received a second contract for the CLPS program. NASA will pay Astrobotic US$199.5 million to take the VIPER rover to the Moon, targeting a landing in November 2024.
A lunar rover or Moon rover is a space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of the Moon. The Apollo Program's Lunar Roving Vehicle was driven on the Moon by members of three American crews, Apollo 15, 16, and 17. Other rovers have been partially or fully autonomous robots, such as the Soviet Union's Lunokhods, Chinese Yutus, and the Indian Pragyan. Four countries have had operating rovers on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.
The (Japanese) Lunar Exploration Program is a program of robotic and human missions to the Moon undertaken by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and its division, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). It is also one of the three major enterprises of the JAXA Space Exploration Center (JSPEC). The main goal of the program is "to elucidate the origin and evolution of the Moon and utilize the Moon in the future".
The Lunar CATALYST initiative is an attempt by NASA to encourage the development of robotic lunar landers that can be integrated with United States commercial launch capabilities to deliver payloads to the lunar surface.
Blue Moon is a family of lunar landers and their associated infrastructure, intended to carry humans and cargo to the Moon, currently under development by a consortium led by Blue Origin and including Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics. Two versions of Blue Moon are under development: a robotic lander planned to land on the Moon in 2024, and a larger human lander planned to land a crew of four astronauts on the lunar surface for the NASA Artemis V mission in 2029.
Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon's south polar region, mostly with the goals of scouting for lunar resources, testing in situ resource utilization (ISRU) concepts, and performing lunar science to support the Artemis lunar program. CLPS is intended to buy end-to-end payload services between Earth and the lunar surface using fixed-price contracts. The program was extended to add support for large payloads starting after 2025.
The Intuitive Machines Nova-C, or simply Nova-C, is a series of lunar landers designed by the American company Intuitive Machines to deliver small commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon.
Intuitive Machines, Inc. is a publicly-traded American company headquartered in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 2013 by Stephen Altemus, Kam Ghaffarian, and Tim Crain.
CubeRover is a class of planetary rover with a standardized modular format meant to accelerate the pace of space exploration. The idea is equivalent to that of the successful CubeSat format, with standardized off-the-shelf components and architecture to assemble small units that will be all compatible, modular, and inexpensive.
The Artemis program is a Moon exploration program that is led by the United States' NASA and was formally established in 2017 via Space Policy Directive 1. The Artemis program is intended to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The program's stated long-term goal is to establish a permanent base on the Moon to facilitate human missions to Mars.
Peregrine Lunar Lander flight 01, commonly referred to as Peregrine Mission One, was an unsuccessful American lunar lander mission. The lander, dubbed Peregrine, was built by Astrobotic Technology and carried payloads for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Peregrine Mission One launched on 8 January 2024, at 2:18 am EST, on the maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket, by United Launch Alliance (ULA). The goal was to land the first U.S.-built lunar lander on the Moon since the crewed Apollo Lunar Module on Apollo 17 in 1972.
VIPER is a lunar rover developed by NASA, and currently planned to be delivered to the surface of the Moon in November 2024. The rover will be tasked with prospecting for lunar resources in permanently shadowed areas in the lunar south pole region, especially by mapping the distribution and concentration of water ice. The mission builds on a previous NASA rover concept called Resource Prospector, which was cancelled in 2018.
MoonArk is a Moon museum made by Carnegie Mellon University which was launched onboard the Astrobotic Technologies Peregrine lunar lander. It is mounted to the main deck of the lander.
Memory of Mankind on the Moon was a time capsule that was launched onboard Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lander. It was made in collaboration with Hungarian company Puli Space Technologies and Memory of Mankind.
Spacebit is a British company that is developing space robotics technology for lunar and planetary missions. The company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
The Colmena project is a science and engineering experiment to design and deploy tiny autonomous robots to explore the surface of the Moon. It was created at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and funded equally by grants from the Mexican Space Agency and the National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies in Mexico. It is the first Latin American scientific instrument designed to explore the surface of the Moon.
USA 
UK 
Canada 
Belgium 
Germany 
Nepal 
France