Luna moon missions over the decades: A timeline of successful lunar landings and discoveries

Luna-25 was supposed to execute a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on August 21

The Russian space agency announced that its Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon's surface. The unmanned robot lander reportedly veered into an uncontrolled orbit before the crash occurred. This incident follows Roscosmos' earlier report of an 'abnormal situation' noticed by its experts on August 19.

Luna-25 marked Russia's return to lunar exploration after a hiatus of nearly half a century. The nation's previous moon-related endeavor was Luna-24, which successfully landed on the Moon on August 18, 1976.

The Luna program from the Soviet Union and subsequently managed by Russia is a sequence of robotic spacecraft missions dispatched to the Moon. This ongoing endeavor of lunar exploration started in the year 1959.

The series of Luna missions serves as a remarkable testament to the significant milestones achieved in the realm of space exploration. These missions, categorized as either orbiters or landers, attained numerous significant accomplishments.

The Luna missions also performed many experiments like, studying the Moon's chemical composition, gravity, temperature, and radiation.

Here is a look at Russia's various moon missions which were successful. Details of missions that had failed to achieve orbit were not released by its space agency.

Luna 1 (January 1959): The mission but did not achieve its intended impact on the Moon. Instead, it achieved a notable feat by becoming the initial spacecraft to escape the Earth-Moon system.

Luna 2 (September 1959): Successfully struck the Moon's surface, securing its place in history as the first human-made object to reach our celestial neighbor.

Luna 3 (October 1959): Captured a series of photographs that unveiled the hitherto unseen far side of the Moon.

Luna 9 (February 1966): Became became the first probe to achieve a soft landing on another planetary body. This feat granted it the distinction of transmitting five circular panoramas in black and white, providing humans with its inaugural close-up views of the lunar landscape.

Luna 10 (March 1966): Became the inaugural artificial satellite to orbit the Moon. From March 1966 to May 1974, Luna orchestrated six successful orbital missions.

Luna 17 (November 1970): It carried Lunokhod vehicles. Lunokhod 1 covered a distance of 10.5 kilometers (6.5 miles) during its 322-day operational period. It returned with over 20,000 television images and 206 high-resolution panoramas that provided insights into the lunar landscape.

Luna 21 (January 1973): It carried Lunokhod vehicles. Operating for approximately four months, Lunokhod 2 covered a remarkable 42 kilometers of lunar terrain.

Luna 16 (September 1970), Luna 20 (February 1972) and Luna 24 (August 1976) returned samples of lunar soil to Earth. In total, these missions in all brought back 301 grams (10.6 ounces) of precious lunar soil.