Sixty two of 111 lunar missions in last seven decades were successful: NASA database

India on July 14 launched its third mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-3, with an aim to soft land on the surface of Earth’s only natural satellite. A successful landing would make India the fourth country to achieve the rare feat after the United States, China and the Soviet Union.

Of the 111 lunar missions in the last seven decades, 62 were successful, 41 failed and eight achieved partial success, according to the U.S. space agency NASA’s database on Moon missions.

India on July 14 launched its third mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-3, with an aim to soft land on the surface of Earth's only natural satellite. A successful landing would make India the fourth country to achieve the rare feat after the United States, China and the Soviet Union.

According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the technically challenging soft landing on the lunar surface, which Chandrayaan-2 could not achieve, has been planned for 5.47 pm on August 23.

Former ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair said the success rate of lunar missions is nearly 50% because of the uncertainties when the rockets leave Earth's gravitational field.

"The influence of other planets, from the Sun, is quite a bit. A lot of radiation conditions exist in space and this leaves some equipment or components prone to failure. In India’s both missions (Chandrayaan 1 and 2), we have precisely reached the moon's orbit," Mr. Nair told PTI on Friday.

From 1958 to 2023, India as well as the U.S., the USSR (now Russia), Japan, the European Union, China and Israel have launched different lunar missions – from orbiters, landers and flyby (orbiting the Moon, landing on the Moon and flying by the Moon), as per the data.

The first mission to the Moon – Pioneer 0 – was launched by the U.S. on August 17, 1958, though it was unsuccessful. Six more missions were launched by the USSR and the U.S. in the same year, but all failed.