Never before in history has a country even attempted to soft-land an object near the moon‘s South Pole.
If all goes well, India’s Chandrayaan-2 will achieve this feat on September 7, 2019. The South Pole is suspected to harbour reservoirs of ice, proof of which will have massive impact on future missions.
Landing sites
The two moon maps show soft-landing (circle) and crash/impact sites (squares) of spacecraft sent by various nations.
Missions’ timeline
The graph shows softlanding and crash/impact dates of spacecraft on the moon from 1959 to 2019. The colours/shapes denote the same as the moon map.
*via an impact probe; ^ proposed; # Europe (ESA), Japan, Israel, S. Korea | Source: Nasa, Reuters
