The Moon’s Clavius Crater (Credit: NASA/USGS scientific display study)
Half a century after the Astronauts Apollo left the latest imprints of lunar dust boot, the moon once again became a destination of fierce ambition and delicate engineering.
This time, they are not only superpowers who compete for plants flags, but also private companies, multinational partnerships and robotic scouts that aim to unlock the secrets of the moon and lay the foundations for the future human return.
So far in 2025, lunar exploration has increased. Several remarkable missions have been launched or landed on the moon. Everyone has sailed in the long journey through the space and descent even more complicated on the surface of the moon or in orbit with various degrees of success. Together, these missions reflect both the promise and the difficulty of returning to the moon in this new space of space defined by innovation, competition and collaboration.
As a aerospace engineer specialized in orientation, navigation and control technologies, I am deeply interested in how any mission – be successful or not, adds to the collective understanding of scientists. These missions can help engineers learn to navigate in the complexity of space, to operate in hostile lunar environments and constantly advance towards a sustainable human presence on the moon.
Why is landing on the moon that is so difficult?
Lunar exploration remains one of the technically more demanding borders in the modern space flight. The choice of a landing site provides for complex compromises between scientific interest, soil safety and sun exposure.
The South Lunar Pole is a particularly attractive area, as it could contain water in the form of ice in shaded craters, a critical resource for future missions. Other sites may have clues about the volcanic activity on the moon or the ancient history of the Solar System.
Each trajectory of the mission must be calculated precisely to make sure that the boat arrives and goes down at the moment and the right place. The engineers must explain the constantly changing position of the moon in its orbit around the earth, the times of the launch windows and the gravitational forces that act on the space vehicle during its journey.
They also need to carefully plan the spatial vehicle path so that it reaches angle and the right speed for a safe approach. Even small calculation errors can lead to serious errors in the landing position or to a completely lost opportunity.
Once on the surface, the Landers must survive extreme temperature oscillations -from over 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) in light of the day up to minimums of -208 f (-133 c) at night -almost dust, radiation and delayed communication with earth. The space vehicle power supply systems, heat control, landing legs and communication connections must work perfectly. In the meantime, these Landers must avoid dangerous soils and rely on sunlight to power their tools and recharge the batteries.
These challenges help to explain why many Landers have crashed or experienced partial failures, even if technology has made a long way from the Apollo era.
Commercial companies face the same technical obstacles as government agencies but often with tighter budgets, smaller and less hardware teams of heritage. Unlike government missions, which can draw on decades of institutional experience and infrastructure, many commercial lunar efforts are browsing these challenges for the first time.
Successful landings and difficult lessons for CLP
Several lunar missions launched this year belong to the commercial program of NASA lunar payload services. CLPS is an initiative that contracts private companies to provide useful and technological loads on the moon. Its goal is to accelerate exploration while reducing costs and encouraging commercial innovation.
The first Moon mission of 2025, Blue Ghost 1 of Firefly Aerospace, launched in January and successfully landed at the beginning of March.
The Lander survived the hard lunar day and transmitted data for almost two weeks before losing energy during the freezing lunar night – a typical operating limit for most of the unheated lunar landscapes.
Blue Ghost has shown that the commercial lander can support critical parts of the Artemis of NASA program, which aims to return the astronauts to the Moon later in this decade.
The second CLP launch of the year, the IM-2 mission of intuitive machines, was launched at the end of February. He targeted a scientifically intriguing site near the region of the South Pole of the Moon.
The Nova-C Lander, named Athena, landed on March 6 near the South Pole. However, during the landing process, Athena tilted herself. Since he landed aside in a crater with irregular soil, he has not been able to deploy his solar panels to generate power, which ended the mission in advance.
While Athena’s pointed landing meant that it could not make all the scientific explorations she had planned, the data that they returned are still precious to understand how future landsers can avoid similar destinies on the robust polar soil.
Not all moon missions must land. Lunar Trailblazer of NASA, a small lunar orbit launched in February together with IM-2, was destined to orbit the moon and map the shape, abundance and distribution of water in the form of ice, especially in shaded craters near the poles.
Shortly after the launch, however, NASA has lost contact with the space vehicle. Engineers suspect that the space vehicle may have encountered a power problem, potentially leaving impoverished batteries.
NASA is continuing recovery efforts, hoping that the solar panels of the space vehicle can recharge in May and June.
Missions in progress and future
Launched the same day as the Blue Ghost Mission in January, the Hakuto-R mission of the Japanese society (Resilience) is traveling to the moon and has successfully entered the lunar orbit.
The Lander made a successful moon Flyby on February 15, with a landing scheduled in early June. Although launched at the same time, resilience required a longer trajectory than Blue Ghost to save energy. This maneuver also allowed the spatial vehicle to collect bonus scientific observations as they wandered around the moon.
The mission, in the event of success, will advance the commercial space sector of Japan and demonstrates an important return for ISPACE after its first lunar Lander crashed during its latest descent in 2023.
The rest of 2025 promises a busy lunar calendar. Intuitive Machines plans to launch IM-3 at the end of 2025 to test more advanced tools and potentially provide scientific experiments of NASA on the moon.
The lunar pathfinder of the European Space Agency will establish a dedicated lunar communication satellite, making it easier for future missions, in particular those operating on the opposite side or Poli, remain in contact with the earth.
In the meantime, the Griffin mission of Astrobotic is expected to deliver NASA Viper Rover to the South Pole of the Moon, where it will directly seek the ice under the surface.
Together, these missions represent an increasingly international and commercial approach to science and lunar exploration.
While the world turns its attention to the moon, every mission – whether it is triumph or setback – approaches humanity to a permanent return to our closest celestial neighbor.
Zhenbo Wang is associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee. Wang receives funding from NASA. The University of Tennessee provides funding as a member of the conversation in the United States.
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