This is a list of the projected landing zones on extraterrestrial bodies. The size of the ellipse or oval graphically represents statistical degrees of uncertainty, i.e. the confidence level of the landing point, with the center of the ellipse being calculated as the most likely given the plethora of variables. [3] Their accuracy has improved from the early attempts in the 1960s; active research continues in the 21st century. [4] [5] [6] [7]
| Mission | Country/Agency | Destination | Date of Impact/Landing | Axes | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surveyor 1 |  NASA | Moon | 1966 | 50 km [8] | Landing error ~18.96 km [9] |
| Surveyor 3 | NASA | Moon | 1967 | 15.1 x 10.6 km [8] | Initial landing ellipse was 30 km, was corrected in-flight after midcourse correction. [8] Landing error ~2.76 km [9] |
| Apollo 11 | NASA | Moon | 1969 | 18.5 x 4.8 km [10] [11] | First crewed landing. Landing error ~6.6 km [9] |
| Apollo 12 | NASA | Moon | 1969 | ~1 km, [12] or 13.3 x 4.8 km [lower-alpha 1] [13] | Second crewed landing. Landing error ~160 m [9] Landed in ~200 m from Surveyor 3, its target. Landing was very precise and not intended to be closer. [12] |
| Apollo 14 | NASA | Moon | 1971 | ~1 km [12] | |
| Apollo 15 | NASA | Moon | 1971 | ~1 km [12] | |
| Apollo 16 | NASA | Moon | 1972 | ~1 km [12] | |
| Apollo 17 | NASA | Moon | 1972 | ~1 km, [12] or 15 x 5 km [14] | Last crewed landing. Landing error ~400 m [9] |
| Viking | NASA | Mars | 1976 | 280 x 100 km [15] | Retrorocket |
| n/a | Shoemaker-Levy 9 (comet) | Jupiter | 1994-07-16 | n/a | As per IAUC in 1993 May 22; 0.0003 AU (45,000 km) from the center of Jupiter, i.e. within the planet's radius of 0.0005 AU (69,911 km) on 1994 July 25.4. (sic) [16] Actual train of impacts as finally projected occurred beyond Jupiter's limb. [17] Included for purposes of comparison. |
| Mars Pathfinder | NASA | Mars | 1997 | 200 x 70 km [18] or 200 x 100 km [19] [20] | Airbags |
| Mars Polar Lander | NASA | Mars | 1999 | 200 x 20 km [21] | Communications failed before landing attempt. |
| Mars Exploration Rovers | NASA | Mars | 2003 | 150 x 20 km [22] | Airbags |
| Beagle 2 |  ESA | Mars | 2003 | 174 x 106 km [23] | Successful landing, communications failure. |
| Huygens | ESA | Titan | 2005 | 1200 x 200 km [24] [25] | |
| Phoenix | NASA | Mars | 2008 | 100 x 19 km [3] or "70 km long" [26] | |
| Mars Science Laboratory | NASA | Mars | 2012 | 25 x 20 km [18] | Sky crane |
| Chang'e 3 |  CNSA | Moon | 2013 | 6 x 6 km [9] | Landed with a landing error of ~89 m, [9] 2 m targeting precision [12] |
| Philae | ESA | 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko | 2014 | 0.5 km [27] | |
| Falcon 9 first-stage booster | SpaceX | Earth | 2015 | ~20 m [28] [29] | First reusable rocket, and the most precise landing system to date. Included for comparison. |
| Schiaparelli EDM | ESA | Mars | 2016 | 100 x 15 km [30] [31] | Crash landing. |
| Cassini | NASA | Saturn | 2017-09-17 | TBD | Rotation brought entry area into view. |
| InSight | NASA | Mars | 2018 | 130 x 27 km [18] | |
| Hayabusa2 |  JAXA | 162173 Ryugu | 2018 | 2 or 3 m [12] | Sampling occurred in ~1 m from a target. [12] |
| OSIRIS-REx | NASA | 101955 Bennu | 2020 | 6.5 m [12] | Sampling occurred in ~1 m from a target. [12] |
| Mars 2020 | NASA | Mars | 2021 | 7.7 x 6.6 km [32] | Sky crane. Landed 1.7 km from center of ellipse. [33] |
| Tianwen-1 | CNSA | Mars | 2021 | 56 x 22 km [12] [34] | |
| ExoMars 2020 |  ESA/Roscosmos | Mars | 2023 | 104 x 19 km [35] [36] [37] or 120 x 19 km [38] | Mission postponed until 2028. |
| Luna 25 | Roscosmos | Moon | 2023-08-19 | 30 x 15 km [2] [39] [40] | Mission failed before landing attempt. |
| Chandrayaan-3 |  ISRO | Moon | 2023-08-23 | 4.5 x 2.5 km [41] or 4 x 2.4 km [42] | |
| OSIRIS-REx return capsule | NASA | Earth | 2023-09-24 | 30 x 80 km, [43] 14 x 58 km, [44] or 12 x 30 km [45] | Sample return from an asteroid. Capsule landed ~ 8 km from the center. [45] |
| Peregrine Mission One | Astrobotic, Inc. | Moon | 2024-01-18 | 24 x 6 km [42] [46] | First U.S. lunar lander built since Apollo Program (1972). Aborted to Point Nemo. |
| SLIM | JAXA | Moon | 2024-01-19 | 100 m [47] [42] | Dubbed "Moon Sniper" for its accuracy (despite having landed upside-down). [48] Landed ~55 m from target point. [49] |
| IM-1 Nova-C Odysseus | NASA | Moon | 2024-02-22 | Landed ~1.5 km from the target. [50] |
A Mars rover is a remote-controlled motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter.
The planet Mars has been explored remotely by spacecraft. Probes sent from Earth, beginning in the late 20th century, have yielded a large increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding its geology and habitability potential. Engineering interplanetary journeys is complicated and the exploration of Mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially the early attempts. Roughly sixty percent of all spacecraft destined for Mars failed before completing their missions, with some failing before their observations could even begin. Some missions have been met with unexpected success, such as the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which operated for years beyond their specification.
The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office. The cost of each mission is capped at a lower level than missions from NASA's New Frontiers or Flagship Programs. As a result, Discovery missions tend to be more focused on a specific scientific goal rather than serving a general purpose.
ExoMars is an astrobiology programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency (Roscosmos).
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.
A sample-return mission is a spacecraft mission to collect and return samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample-return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as loose material and rocks. These samples may be obtained in a number of ways, such as soil and rock excavation or a collector array used for capturing particles of solar wind or cometary debris. Nonetheless, concerns have been raised that the return of such samples to planet Earth may endanger Earth itself.
A rover is a planetary surface exploration device designed to move over the rough surface of a planet or other planetary mass celestial bodies. Some rovers have been designed as land vehicles to transport members of a human spaceflight crew; others have been partially or fully autonomous robots. Rovers are typically created to land on another planet via a lander-style spacecraft, tasked to collect information about the terrain, and to take crust samples such as dust, soil, rocks, and even liquids. They are essential tools in space exploration.
Jezero is a crater on Mars in the Syrtis Major quadrangle, about 45.0 km (28.0 mi) in diameter. Thought to have once been flooded with water, the crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. Besides having a delta, the crater shows point bars and inverted channels. From a study of the delta and channels, it was concluded that the lake inside the crater probably formed during a period in which there was continual surface runoff.
The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is a collaborative project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Roscosmos agency that sent an atmospheric research orbiter and the Schiaparelli demonstration lander to Mars in 2016 as part of the European-led ExoMars programme.
Endeavour is an impact crater located in the Meridiani Planum extraterrestrial plain within the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle (MC-19) region of the planet Mars. Endeavour is about 22 kilometers (14 mi) in diameter. Using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data, phyllosilicate-bearing outcrops have been detected along its rim. These minerals may have formed under wet conditions in a low-acidic environment during the early history of Mars. There are raised rim segments to the north, east, and southwest. The rim has become worn, rounded and degraded, with infilling of plains material in a manner similar to the Victoria crater.
The Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C), also known as Mars 2018 mission, was a NASA concept for a Mars rover mission, proposed to be launched in 2018 together with the European ExoMars rover. The MAX-C rover concept was cancelled in April 2011 due to budget cuts.
Rosalind Franklin, previously known as the ExoMars rover, is a planned robotic Mars rover, part of the international ExoMars programme led by the European Space Agency and the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation. The mission was scheduled to launch in July 2020, but was postponed to 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused an indefinite delay of the programme, as the member states of the ESA voted to suspend the joint mission with Russia; in July 2022, ESA terminated its cooperation on the project with Russia. As of May 2022, the launch of the rover is not expected to occur before 2028 due to the need for a new non-Russian landing platform.
Hargraves is a Hesperian-age complex double-layered ejecta impact crater on Mars. It was emplaced near the crustal dichotomy in the vicinity of the Nili Fossae, the Syrtis Major volcanic plains, and the Isidis impact basin, and is situated within the Syrtis Major quadrangle. Hargraves has been the target of focused study because its ejecta apron is particularly well-preserved for a Martian crater of its size. It has been analogized to similar double-layered ejecta blankets on Earth, including that of the Ries impact structure, which was where the conceptual model for how such craters formed was first advanced.
Schiaparelli EDM was a failed Entry, Descent, and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) of the ExoMars programme—a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos. It was built in Italy and was intended to test technology for future soft landings on the surface of Mars. It also had a limited but focused science payload that would have measured atmospheric electricity on Mars and local meteorological conditions.
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.
