55.9 Percent Lunar Missions Successful in Last 7 Decades: NASA

All lunar missions taken up during the past seven decades by different countries have not been always successful. According to the NASA database on space missions to reach the moon, till now around 55.9 per cent of the lunar missions have been successful.

During the past 70 years, a total of 111 missions were initiated by different countries of the world. Out of them 62 were successful, 41 failed and eight achieved partial success, states NASA’s database on Moon missions.

If India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission makes a successful soft landing, then India will be the fourth country to achieve this after the United States, China, and the erstwhile USSR.

From 1958 to 2023, India as well as the US, the USSR (now Russia), Japan, the European Union, China, and Israel launched different lunar missions that involved orbiters, landers and flyby, landing on the Moon and flying by the Moon.

The first mission to the Moon, Pioneer 0, launched by the US on August 17, 1958, was unsuccessful. Six more lunar missions by the US and the USSR failed in 1958. Luna 1 of the USSR was the first successful moon flyby mission on January 2, 1959.

The first lunar soft landing was by the USSR’s Luna 9 in 1966.

The Apollo 11 of the US in July 1969 landed the first humans on the moon. From 1958 to 1979, only the US and the USSR were involved in lunar missions and launched 90 such space expeditions. There were no lunar missions from 1980 to 1989.

Japan, the European Union, China, India, and Israel were late entrants into the arena of lunar missions.