DESCENT
A FIELD GUIDE TO LUNA & THE MOON RACE
Ten chapters on the two very different strategies — one robotic, one crewed — that two nations used to reach the same 384,400 kilometres, and on the new race now heading back to the same coordinates. Scroll to begin the mission.
BEGIN — CHAPTER 01 →Not quite escape velocity — just enough
A spacecraft bound for the Moon doesn't need the full second cosmic velocity — it only needs enough speed to raise its orbit until the Moon's own gravity takes over. That threshold sits close to 10.9–11.0 km/s from a low parking orbit: comfortably above first cosmic velocity, just under full Earth escape.
Adjust the trans-lunar injection burn below and see where the same spacecraft ends up.
Twenty-four missions, five firsts
Between 1959 and 1976, the Soviet Union flew 24 uncrewed Luna missions — 15 of them successful — and claimed nearly every early lunar milestone before a single human ever left Earth orbit. Scrub through the program.
Six landings, twelve boot prints
Where the Soviet Union sent machines, the United States sent people. Apollo 11 landed the first crew on July 20, 1969; five more landings followed through Apollo 17 in December 1972, each carrying more science and staying longer than the last.
A robotic lander, taken apart
Luna 16, the first robotic sample-return mission, combined a landing stage, a drill, and a small rocket-powered return capsule in a single spacecraft. Select a component.
Driven from a room in Crimea
Lunokhod 1 landed with Luna 17 in November 1970 — the first robotic rover on another world, driven in real time by a five-person crew on Earth watching a slow-updating video feed. Lunokhod 2 followed in 1973 and drove 42 kilometres, a distance record that stood for over four decades. Select a part.
Send a person, or send ten machines
Neither approach was cheaper or safer in any simple sense — each traded one kind of risk and cost for another.
Grams against kilograms
Three Luna missions drilled and returned lunar soil entirely without a crew; six Apollo missions carried astronauts who could choose, by eye, which rocks were worth the weight.
The two places nobody had seen
Half a century later, back at the pole
Figures below reflect the state of active programs as of mid-2026; schedules for crewed and robotic lunar missions shift often, so treat dates as current plans, not fixed facts.
From Luna 1 to whoever lands next
Every lunar program since has stood on this one's shoulders — including the robotic and crewed missions now heading, once again, toward the poles.