Lunar Missions: Stories of Triumph and Disaster

Lunar missions made the news twice this week, but for very different reasons. Find out why India is celebrating a technological triumph, while Russia is downplaying a catastrophic failure.

Only about half of the people living today were around when Apollo 11 first landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. I remember it vividly, including Neil Armstrong’s now-famous, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” speech, that we couldn’t actually make out in the live broadcast.

No humans have been back to the moon since Apollo 17 splashed down on December 17, 1972. Even so, we’ve seen 14 uncrewed lunar missions over the past half-century, along with a number of orbital missions.

We’ve also seen various uncrewed missions to other places in our solar system since the Apollo program. These have included Russia’s Venera missions to Venus, NASA’s Pioneer, Viking and Voyager programs and the New Horizons flyby of Pluto.

Technological Triumph and Catastrophic Failure

Two new, uncrewed lunar missions made the news this week, with very different outcomes. One was a technological triumph, while the other was a…