Lander (spacecraft)
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A lander is a
For bodies with
When a high-velocity impact is intentionally planned in order to study the consequences of impact, the spacecraft is called an impactor.[2]
Several terrestrial bodies have been subject to lander or impactor exploration. Among them are Earth's Moon; the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury; Saturn's moon Titan; asteroids; and comets.
Landers
Lunar
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Lunar_surface_shortly_after_landing%2C_Apollo_16.jpg/220px-Lunar_surface_shortly_after_landing%2C_Apollo_16.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Surveyor_3_on_Moon.jpg/220px-Surveyor_3_on_Moon.jpg)
Beginning with
In 1966, the Soviet Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth. The American Surveyor program (1966–1968) was designed to determine where Apollo could land safely. As a result, these robotic missions required soft landers to sample the lunar soil and determine the thickness of the dust layer, which was unknown before Surveyor.
The U.S.-crewed
The Chinese
On 6 September 2019, the lander
About 4 years later, on 23 August 2023, the lander
Japan became the fifth country to land a lunar probe on 19 January 2024, by successfully landing its SLIM lander.
On 22 February 2024, Intuitive Machine's Odysseus successfully landed on the Moon after taking off on a SpaceX Falcon 9. This was the first successful landing of a privately owned spacecraft on the Moon.[10][11]
China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May, which conducted the first lunar sample return from the far side of the Moon.[12] This is China's second lunar sample return mission, the first being achieved by Chang'e 5 from the lunar near side in 2020.[13]
Venus
The Soviet
Mars
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Mars_Viking_12a001.png/290px-Mars_Viking_12a001.png)
The Soviet Union's
The Soviet Union planned the heavy
NASA's Viking 1 and Viking 2 were launched respectively in August and September 1975, each comprising an orbiter vehicle and a lander. Viking 1 landed in July 1976 Viking 2 in September 1976. The Viking program rovers were the first successful, functioning Mars landers. The mission ended in May 1983, after both landers had stopped working.
Mars 96 was the first complex post-Soviet Russian mission with an orbiter, lander, penetrators. Planned for 1996, it failed at launch. A planned repeat of this mission, Mars 98, was cancelled due to lack of funding.
The U.S. Mars Pathfinder was launched in December 1996 and released the first acting rover on Mars, Sojourner, in July 1997. It worked until September 1997.
The Mars Polar Lander ceased communication on 3 December 1999 prior to reaching the surface and is presumed to have crashed.
The European Beagle 2 lander deployed successfully from the Mars Express spacecraft but the signal confirming a landing which should have come on 25 December 2003 was not received. No communication was ever established and Beagle 2 was declared lost on 6 February 2004. The proposed 2009 British Beagle 3 lander mission to search for life, past or present, was not adopted.
The American Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity were launched in June and July 2003. They reached the Martian surface in January 2004 using landers featuring airbags and parachutes to soften impact. Spirit ceased functioning in 2010, more than five years past its design lifetime.[14] As of 13 February 2019, Opportunity was declared effectively dead, having exceeded its three-month design lifetime by well over a decade.[15]
The U.S. spacecraft Phoenix successfully achieved soft landing on the surface of Mars on 25 May 2008, using a combination of parachutes and rocket descent engines.
China launched the Tianwen-1 mission, on 23 July 2020. It includes an orbiter, a lander and a 240 kilograms rover. The orbiter was placed into orbit on 10 February 2021. The Zhurong successfully soft landed on 14 May 2021 and deployed on 22 May 2021.
Martian moons
While several flybys conducted by Mars orbiting probes have provided images and other data about the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, only few of them intended to land on the surface of these satellites. Two probes under the Soviet Phobos program were successfully launched in 1988, but in 1989 the intended landings on Phobos and Deimos were not conducted due to failures in the spacecraft system. The post-Soviet Russian Fobos-Grunt probe was an intended sample return mission to Phobos in 2012 but failed after launch in 2011.
In 2007
The
Titan
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Huygens_surface_color.jpg/220px-Huygens_surface_color.jpg)
The
The proposed U.S. Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) mission considered a lander that would splash down in a lake in Titan's northern hemisphere and float on the surface of the lake for few months. Spain's proposed Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer (TALISE) mission is similar to the TiME lander but has its own propulsion system for controlling shipping.
Comets and asteroids
Vesta, the multi-aimed Soviet mission, was developed in cooperation with European countries for realization in 1991–1994 but canceled due to the Soviet Union disbanding. It included a flyby of Mars, where Vesta would deliver an aerostat (balloon or airship) and small landers or penetrators, followed by flybys of Ceres or 4 Vesta and some other asteroids with the impact of a large penetrator on one of them.[clarification needed]
The first landing on a small Solar System body (an object in the Solar System that is not a moon, planet, or dwarf planet) was performed in 2001 by the probe NEAR Shoemaker at asteroid 433 Eros despite the fact that NEAR was not originally designed to be capable of landing.
Japanese
The
JAXA launched the Hayabusa2 asteroid space probe in 2014 to deliver several landing parts (including Minerva II and German Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) landers and a Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) penetrator) in 2018–2019 to return samples to Earth by 2020.
The Chinese Space Agency is designing a sample retrieval mission from Ceres that would take place during the 2020s.[19]
Mercury
Launched in October 2018 and expected to reach Mercury in December 2025,
Moons of Jupiter
A few Jupiter probes provide many images and other data about its moons. Some proposed missions with landing on Jupiter's moons were canceled or not adopted. The small nuclear-powered Europa lander was proposed as part of NASA's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission that was canceled in 2006.
ESA launched the
Impactors
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Deep_Impact_HRI.jpeg/220px-Deep_Impact_HRI.jpeg)
Deep Space 2
The Deep Space 2 impactor probe was to be the first spacecraft to penetrate below the surface of another planet. However, the mission failed with the loss of its mother ship, Mars Polar Lander, which lost communication with Earth during entry into Mars' atmosphere on 3 December 1999.
Deep Impact
Comet Tempel 1 was visited by NASA's Deep Impact probe on 4 July 2005. The impact crater formed was approximately 200 m wide and 30–50 m deep, and scientists detected the presence of silicates, carbonates, smectite, amorphous carbon and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.[21][22]
Moon Impact Probe
The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) developed by the
LCROSS
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was a
MESSENGER
The NASA MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) mission to Mercury launched on 3 August 2004 and entered orbit around the planet on 18 March 2011.[29] Following a mapping mission, MESSENGER was directed to impact Mercury's surface on 30 April 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred near 3:26 pm EDT on 30 April 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be 16 m in diameter.[30][31]
AIDA
The ESA's
See also
- List of artificial objects on the Moon
- List of artificial objects on Mars
- List of artificial objects on Venus
References
- ISBN 978-0-521-82002-8.
- ^ Davis, Phil; Munsell, Kirk (23 January 2009). "Technology – Impactor – The Plan". Deep Impact Legacy Site (archive). NASA/JPL. Archived from the original on 26 April 2009. Retrieved 22 April 2009.
- ^ Barbosa, Rui C. (3 January 2019). "China lands Chang'e-4 mission on the far side of the Moon". Archived from the original on 19 August 2020. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
- ^ a b Williams, David R. (12 December 2019). "Future Chinese Lunar Missions". NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original on 1 April 2020.
- ^ Pascale, Bresson; Sart, Raphaël. "State visit of President Macron to China – In 2023, Chang'e 6 will deploy the French DORN instrument on the Moon to study the lunar exosphere" (PDF) (Press release). CNES. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 August 2020. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
- ^ "India has found its Vikram lander after it crashed into the moon's surface". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
- ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
- ^ Jones, Andrew (23 August 2023). "Chandrayaan-3: India becomes fourth country to land on the moon". SpaceNews. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
- ^ "India First to Land Near Moon South Pole After Russia Fails". Bloomberg.com. 23 August 2023. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
- ^ SpaceX gearing up to launch Intuitive Machines private moon lander in February Space.com. By Mike Wall. Jan. 31, 2024. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2024.
- ^ David, Emillia (22 February 2024). "Odysseus achieves the first US Moon landing since 1972". The Verge. Retrieved 23 February 2024.
- ^ Andrew Jones [@AJ_FI] (25 April 2023). "China's Chang'e-6 sample return mission (a first ever lunar far side sample-return) is scheduled to launch in May 2024, and expected to take 53 days from launch to return module touchdown. Targeting southern area of Apollo basin (~43º S, 154º W)" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Jones, Andrew (10 January 2024). "China's Chang'e-6 probe arrives at spaceport for first-ever lunar far side sample mission". SpaceNews. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
- ^ "Meteorite Found on Mars Yields Clues About Planet's Past". NASA. 10 August 2009. Archived from the original on 14 August 2009. Retrieved 8 September 2009.
- ^ "Opportunity Status". NASA. Archived from the original on 20 June 2014. Retrieved 19 August 2014.
- ^ Clark, Stephen (20 November 2017). "NASA confirms contribution to Japanese-led Mars mission". Spaceflight Now.
- ^ Yamakawa, Hiroshi; Le Gall, Jean-Yves; Ehrenfreund, Pascale; Dittus, Hansjörg (3 October 2018). "Joint Statement with Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and German Aerospace Center (DLR) regarding Martian Moons eXploration" (PDF) (Press release). JAXA. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
- ^ Fujimoto, Masaki (11 January 2017). "JAXA's exploration of the two moons of Mars, with sample return from Phobos" (PDF). Lunar and Planetary Institute. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
- ^ Zou Yongliao; Li Wei; Ouyang Ziyuan. "China's Deep-space Exploration to 2030" (PDF). Chinese Academy of Sciences. pp. 12–13.
- ^ "N° 75–2003: Critical decisions on Cosmic Vision". European Space Agency. 7 November 2003.
- ^ "Deep Impact: A Smashing Success". Deep Impact homepage. Archived from the original on 13 July 2005. Retrieved 11 May 2009.
- ^ Dolmetsch, Chris (3 July 2005). "Deep Impact Launches Projectile to Blow Hole in Comet (Update1)". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 11 September 2005. Retrieved 11 May 2009.
- ^ "MIP detected water on Moon way back in June: ISRO Chairman". The Hindu. Bangalore. 25 September 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
- ^ "Chandrayaan first discovered water on moon, but..." Daily News and Analysis. Bangalore. 25 September 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
- hdl:2060/20100026403.
- ^ "NASA – LCROSS: Mission Overview". NASA. Archived from the original on 5 May 2010. Retrieved 14 November 2009.
- ^ LRO/LCROSS Press Kit v2 (PDF) (Report). NASA. June 2009. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 October 2009.
- ^ Dino, Jonas; Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite Team (13 November 2009). "LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon". NASA. Archived from the original on 6 January 2010. Retrieved 14 November 2009.
- ^ "MESSENGER NASA's Mission to Mercury Launch Press Kit" (PDF) (Press release). NASA / JHUAPL. August 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 August 2007. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
- ^ "Farewell, MESSENGER! NASA Probe Crashes Into Mercury". Space.com. 30 April 2015. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- ^ "Press Release: NASA Completes MESSENGER Mission with Expected Impact on Mercury's Surface". NASA. 30 April 2015. Retrieved 2 May 2015.
- NASASpaceFlight.com. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
External links
Media related to Landers (spacecraft) at Wikimedia Commons