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Source: The post is based on the article “Moon missions offer tough tests – landers, the toughest” published in The Hindu on 26th July 2023.
What is the News?
According to the data, historically 40% of moon missions have failed and 60% of lander missions have been unsuccessful.
What is the data on the success rate of Moon Missions?
Moon Missions: Historically, over 40% of moon missions have failed.
– If we consider only those missions which involved a robotic lander (a spacecraft performing a controlled landing on the lunar surface), the failure rate sharply increases to over 60%.
– The failure rate of ‘sample return’ missions, which collect samples from the moon and bring them back to the earth is even higher at 67% as such missions are complex and riskier.
– Impactor missions, in which a spacecraft or a part of it is deliberately made to collide with the moon in order to study the resulting crater or dust plume, also have a high failure rate of 56.3%.
Chandrayaan 2 Mission: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chandrayaan 2 mission was launched in 2019.The lander of Chandrayaan 2 ‘Vikram’ lost contact with the earth and went blank minutes before lunar touchdown. The mission of the lander and the rover ‘Pragyan’ was declared a failure. The orbiter mission was a success as the orbiter was placed in the intended orbit.
Total number of lunar missions completed by decade: The 1950s had a very high failure rate across mission types. All the orbiter missions failed. The overall failure rate was 84.6%.
– The 1960s saw the highest number of moon missions (74) for any decade thus far. But the overall failure rate remained relatively high at 62.2%.
– The 1970s were much better with 40 missions and just a 25% failure rate. In general, the number of moon missions dropped in the following decades.
– The 2000s stood out as all the missions succeeded. The 2010s also had a much lower failure rate of 22% But the number of unsuccessful missions went up again in the following decade and the overall failure rate rose to 47.1%.
