Lunar probe

A lunar probe is a space probe whose aim (usually) is the scientific exploration of the earth's moon . A distinction is made between

• Flyby probes (especially probes in the early years of space travel)
• Orbiters (based on a lunar orbit swivel) - lunar satellite
• Landing probes (see also soft landing )
• Moon rovers (robots driving around on the moon).

The first successful lunar probes were the three Soviet Lunik missions (Lunik 1–3, 1959), of which the second succeeded in a targeted hard landing on the lunar surface and the third photographed the back of the moon for the first time , and the American Pioneer 4 (1959) with a planned flyby of the moon, about 60,000 km away. The seven SU ​​and US probes launched in 1958 still all failed, however, mostly due to the rocket exploding .

Lunar probes with new techniques

Space history and the history of astronomy wrote above all:

• the Ranger 7–9 probes (1964/65), which gave the first close-ups before the hard landing
• Luna 9 and Luna 10/11 (1966): first soft landing and orbiting the moon
• Lunar Orbiter 1–5 (from 1966): first complete selenographic mapping
• Surveyor 1–7 (1966–68), special soil surveys in several lunar regions
• some series 300 Kosmos moon probes
• the moon rover Lunochod 1 (1970/71) and Lunochod 2 (1973) of the probes Luna 17 and 21, as well
• Luna 16, 20 and 24 (1970/72/76), first automatic return of moon rocks ( "sample return" )
• two US probes from the 1990s ( Clementine and Lunar Prospector )
• and the ESA probe SMART-1 (2003) - for the first time with ion propulsion .

With Kaguya and Chang'e-1 , Japan and China appeared for the first time in 2007; In 2008 India followed with Chandrayaan-1 . In 2009, NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the LCROSS penetrator . The planned Russian Luna Glob mission has a similar interpretation .

See also

• Chronology of the moon missions
• List of man-made objects on the moon
• Moon cards , selenodesia
• Google Lunar X-Prize

Web links

• Bernd Leitenberger: Unmanned missions to the moon (part 1)
• Bernd Leitenberger: Unmanned missions to the moon (part 2)