Moon missions offer tough tests – landers, the toughest

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%.