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Research dossier · General Reference

Moon landing

arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ495307 ↗
Source-derived summary

A Moon landing (also known as a lunar landing) is the arrival of a crewed or robotic lander on the Moon. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959, and the first crewed mission to land on the Moon was Apollo 11 in 1969.

There were six crewed landings between 1969 and 1972 and numerous uncrewed landings. All crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the Apollo program, with the last departing in December 1972. After Luna 24 in 1976, there were no soft landings—landings without significant damage—on the Moon until Chang'e 3 in 2013. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until Chang'e 4 landed on the far side of the Moon in 2019.

Uncrewed landings

Government landings

Six government space agencies, Interkosmos, NASA, CNSA, ISRO, JAXA and ESA, have reached the Moon with uncrewed missions. The Soviet Union (Interkosmos), the United States (NASA), China (CNSA), India (ISRO), and Japan (JAXA) are the only five nations to have successfully achieved soft landings.

The Soviet Union performed the first hard Moon landing, in which the spacecraft intentionally crashed into the Moon at high speed, with the Luna 2 spacecraft in 1959, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4.

Following their initial hard landings on the Moon, sixteen Soviet, U.S., Chinese and Indian spacecraft have used braking rockets (retrorockets) to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Moon landing” is arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Moon, landing and arrival, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 1969, 1972, 1976—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Moon, landing and arrival is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q495307. The Library of Congress control number is sh2002012310. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1969, 1972 and 1976.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Moon landing”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Moon landing primary sources, Moon landing archive and Moon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Moon landing”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Moon landing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.