55-588: The Altair spacecraft, previously known as the Lunar Surface Access Module or LSAM , was the planned lander spacecraft component of NASA's cancelled Constellation program . Astronauts would have used the spacecraft for landings on the Moon , which was intended to begin around 2019. The Altair spacecraft was planned to be used both for lunar sortie and lunar outpost missions. On February 1, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama announced
110-453: A magnetometer , a seismometer , a soil penetrating device (mole), and a micro-rover. The MSE aspect of the mission was cancelled in 2003 due to budgetary constraints. A few Jupiter probes provide many images and other data about its moons. Some proposed missions with landing on Jupiter's moons were canceled or not adopted. The small nuclear-powered Europa lander was proposed as part of NASA's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission that
165-616: A privately owned spacecraft on the Moon. China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May 2024, which conducted the first lunar sample return from Apollo Basin on the far side of the Moon . This is China's second lunar sample return mission, the first was achieved by Chang'e 5 from the lunar near side four years earlier. It also carried the Chinese Jinchan rover to conduct infrared spectroscopy of lunar surface and imaged Chang'e 6 lander on lunar surface. The lander-ascender-rover combination
220-412: A rover . Designed to rendezvous and land on a low-gravity body, Hayabusa became the second spacecraft to land on an asteroid, and in 2010 the first sample return mission from an asteroid. The Rosetta probe, launched 2 March 2004, put the first robotic lander Philae on the comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014. Due to the extremely low gravity of such bodies, the landing system included
275-464: A small Solar System body (an object in the Solar System that is not a moon, planet, or dwarf planet) was performed in 2001 by the probe NEAR Shoemaker at asteroid 433 Eros despite the fact that NEAR was not originally designed to be capable of landing. Japanese Hayabusa probe made several attempts to land on 25143 Itokawa in 2005 with mixed success, including a failed attempt to deploy
330-530: A connection to the first crewed lunar landing, Apollo 11 's Eagle ; the name Altair itself is a latinization of the Arabic الطائر al-ṭā'ir , meaning "the eagle," "the bird," or "the flyer." Prior to the announcement of the "Altair" name, reports had suggested other names had been considered by NASA, but Altair won in a vote by the design team over Pegasus . NASA developed only conceptual designs for Altair. No Altair spacecraft were built—plans called for
385-595: A first landing on the Moon in 2018. Like the Apollo Lunar Module (LM), Altair was envisioned as having two stages . The descent module comprising propellant tanks, a main engine, landing gear and supporting structure and an Ascent Module with a pressurized crew cabin, life support systems, docking systems, avionics, propellant tanks and engine for lunar ascent. Like the Apollo LM, the Altair's crew cabin
440-466: A harpoon launcher intended to anchor a cable in the comet's surface and pull the lander down. JAXA launched the Hayabusa2 asteroid space probe in 2014 to deliver several landing parts (including Minerva II and German Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) landers and a Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) penetrator) in 2018–2019 to return samples to Earth by 2020. The Chinese Space Agency is designing
495-465: A low terminal velocity . In some cases, small landing rockets will be fired just before impact in order to reduce the lander's velocity. Landing may be accomplished by controlled descent and set down on landing gear , with the possible addition of a post-landing attachment mechanism (such as the mechanism used by Philae ) for celestial bodies with low gravity. Some missions (for example, Luna 9 and Mars Pathfinder ) used inflatable airbags to cushion
550-715: A low-Earth orbit ( LEO ) using the super heavy-lift Ares V launch vehicle, followed by a separate launch of an Orion spacecraft lifted by an Ares I . After rendezvous and docking with Altair in LEO, the crew would have then configured the Orion/Altair for the journey to the Moon. The development of Altair was managed by the Constellation Lunar Lander Project Office at Johnson Space Center (JSC). JSC worked directly with Apollo astronauts, various industry suppliers and universities to develop
605-555: A main hatch for accessing the lunar surface. Unlike the Apollo LM, Altair would have an airlock similar to those on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station between the cabin and main hatch. The airlock allowed the astronauts to don and doff their spacesuits without tracking potentially hazardous Moon dust into the main cabin and allowed the vehicle to retain its internal pressure. Unlike
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#1732780224706660-491: A number of Venus landers, some of which were crushed during descent much as Galileo's Jupiter "lander" and others which successfully touched down. Venera 3 in 1966 and Venera 7 in 1970 became the first impact and soft landing on Venus respectively. The Soviet Vega program also placed two balloons in the Venusian atmosphere in 1985, which were the first aerial tools on other planets. The Soviet Union's Mars 1962B became
715-490: A permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region. LCROSS was launched together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on 18 June 2009, as part of the shared Lunar Precursor Robotic Program . LCROSS was designed to collect and relay data from the impact and debris plume resulting from the launch vehicle's spent Centaur upper rocket stage striking the crater Cabeus near the south pole of
770-524: A proposal to cancel the Constellation program (except the Orion spacecraft ), to be replaced with a re-scoped program, effective with the U.S. 2011 fiscal year budget. On December 13, 2007, NASA's Lunar Surface Access Module was retitled "Altair", after the 12th brightest star in the northern hemisphere's night sky, Altair in the constellation Aquila . In Latin, aquila means " eagle ", providing
825-434: A result, these robotic missions required soft landers to sample the lunar soil and determine the thickness of the dust layer, which was unknown before Surveyor. The U.S.-crewed Apollo Lunar Modules (1969–1972) with rovers (1971–1972) and late Soviet large robotic landers (1969–), Lunokhods (1970–1973) and sample return missions (1970–1976) used a rocket descent engine for a soft landing of astronauts and lunar rovers on
880-662: A sample retrieval mission from Ceres that would take place during the 2020s. Launched in October 2018 and expected to reach Mercury in December 2025, ESA 's BepiColombo mission to Mercury was originally designed to include the Mercury Surface Element (MSE). The lander would have carried a 7 kg payload consisting of an imaging system (a descent camera and a surface camera), a heat flow and physical properties package, an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer ,
935-418: A source of heat. Cost overruns and immature LOX/LCH 4 rocket technology forced NASA to stick with cryogenic and hypergolic systems, although later variants of Altair were meant to serve as testbeds for methane rockets and Sabatier reactors after a permanent lunar base was established. Because of the spacecraft's size and weight, Altair, and its associated Earth Departure Stage , would have been launched into
990-483: Is a spacecraft that descends towards, then comes to rest on the surface of an astronomical body other than Earth . In contrast to an impact probe, which makes a hard landing that damages or destroys the probe upon reaching the surface, a lander makes a soft landing after which the probe remains functional. For bodies with atmospheres , the landing occurs after atmospheric entry . In these cases, landers may employ parachutes to slow them down enough to maintain
1045-616: The OSIRIS-REx II mission concept. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission in 2024, a sample return mission targeting Phobos. MMX will land and collect samples from Phobos multiple times, along with deploying a rover jointly developed by CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). By using a corer sampling mechanism,
1100-534: The Tianwen-1 mission, on 23 July 2020. It includes an orbiter, a lander and a 240 kilograms rover. The orbiter was placed into orbit on 10 February 2021. The Zhurong successfully soft landed on 14 May 2021 and deployed on 22 May 2021. While several flybys conducted by Mars orbiting probes have provided images and other data about the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos , only few of them intended to land on
1155-438: The Apollo LM, in which the entire cabin was depressurized during extra-vehicular activity , the airlock would allow a crew member with a malfunctioning spacesuit to quickly return to the Altair spacecraft without having to terminate the entire EVA, and allowed the landing party to complete most of their tasks during their 7-day lunar stay. Also, the airlock would remain as part of the Altair's descent stage, allowing NASA to utilize
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#17327802247061210-590: The ISS and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft , a food warmer to eliminate the "cold soup" menu used during Apollo missions, a laser-guided distance measurement system (with radar backup), using data acquired by advanced uncrewed lunar orbiting spacecraft, and new " glass cockpit " and Boeing 787 -based computer system identical to that on the Orion spacecraft. Altair intended to utilize current cryogenic technologies for
1265-507: The Moon on 1 December 2020, China completed the Chang'e 5 mission on 16 December 2020 with the return of approximately 2 kilograms of lunar sample. On 6 September 2019, the lander Vikram on Chandrayaan-2 , attempting to land on the lunar south polarregion. Due to software glitch, it lost contact and crashed moments before landing. About 4 years later, on 23 August 2023, the lander Vikram on Chandrayaan-3 successfully touched down on
1320-452: The Moon. The Chinese Chang'e 3 mission and its Yutu (' Jade Rabbit ') rover landed on 14 December 2013. In 2019, China's Chang'e 4 mission successfully landed the Yutu-2 rover on the far side of the Moon . Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6 are designed to be sample return missions. Chang'e 5 and 6 were conducted successfully in 2020 and 2024 respectively. Chang'e 5 mission landed on
1375-592: The Moon. Centaur impacted successfully on 9 October 2009, at 11:31 UTC . The "shepherding spacecraft" (carrying the LCROSS mission payload) descended through Centaur's plume of debris, and collected and relayed data before impacting six minutes later at 11:37 UTC. The project was successful in discovering water in Cabeus. The NASA MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) mission to Mercury launched on 3 August 2004 and entered orbit around
1430-410: The Orion, was intended to power the ascent stage. Originally, NASA wanted to power the ascent stage using LOX and liquid methane (LCH 4 ) engines, RS-18 , as future missions to Mars would require the astronauts to live on the planet. The Sabatier Reactor could be used to convert the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) found on Mars into methane, using either found or transported hydrogen, a catalyst , and
1485-522: The Orion/Altair stack into lunar orbit (also necessary if flown without Orion for cargo-only missions). The new lander would have been powered by a modified RL-10 engine (currently in use on the upper stage of the Delta IV rocket and Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket), burning liquid hydrogen (LH 2 ) and liquid oxygen (LOX) for the descent phase. A single AJ-10 rocket engine, like that on
1540-687: The Soviet Union was the first country to successfully land a man on the Moon, NASA develops the LSAM as a successor to the " LM " after establishing a permanent base on the Moon in the early 1970s. However, the LSAM looks more like the LM than the Altair. [REDACTED] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . Lander (spacecraft) A lander
1595-568: The airlock as a component of the Lunar Outpost. Because the Ares V payload shroud was planned to have a diameter of 33 feet (10 m) and height of 49 feet (15 m) (including landing gear), the landers were designed to retract so as to fit within the Ares V's payload shroud. The spacecraft would also have included an improved miniature camping-style toilet, similar to the unit now used on
1650-474: The architecture for Altair. In conjunction with early development a mockup or testbed was to have been developed at JSC to study/develop specialized subsystems and other design considerations. Northrop Grumman , which built the Apollo Lunar Module, was contracted to help the project office develop the system concept. In For All Mankind , a 2019 TV series depicting an alternate reality in which
1705-456: The descent stages and hypergolic technologies for the ascent stage. The Apollo LM, as advanced in both computer and engineering technology in its day, used hypergolic fuels in both of its stages, chemicals that combust on contact with each other, requiring no ignition mechanism and allowing an indefinite storage period. Both the cryogenic and hypergolic systems, like that of the Apollo LM, would be force-fed using high-pressure helium , eliminating
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1760-478: The existence of water on the moon and determining the water's characteristics. The Deep Space 2 impactor probe was to be the first spacecraft to penetrate below the surface of another planet. However, the mission failed with the loss of its mother ship, Mars Polar Lander , which lost communication with Earth during entry into Mars' atmosphere on 3 December 1999. Comet Tempel 1 was visited by NASA's Deep Impact probe on 4 July 2005. The impact crater formed
1815-539: The first acting rover on Mars, Sojourner , in July 1997. It worked until September 1997. The Mars Polar Lander ceased communication on 3 December 1999 prior to reaching the surface and is presumed to have crashed. The European Beagle 2 lander deployed successfully from the Mars Express spacecraft but the signal confirming a landing which should have come on 25 December 2003 was not received. No communication
1870-584: The first few spacecraft to reach the lunar surface were impactors, not landers. They were part of the Soviet Luna program or the American Ranger program . In 1966, the Soviet Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth. The American Surveyor program (1966–1968) was designed to determine where Apollo could land safely. As
1925-544: The first mission intended to impact on Mars in 1962. In 1971, the lander of the Mars 3 probe conducted the first soft landing on Mars, but communication was lost within a minute after touchdown, which occurred during one of the worst global dust storms since the beginning of telescopic observations of the Red Planet. Three other landers, Mars 2 in 1971 and Mars 5 and Mars 6 in 1973, either crashed or failed to even enter
1980-461: The first successful, functioning Mars landers. The mission ended in May 1983, after both landers had stopped working. Mars 96 was the first complex post-Soviet Russian mission with an orbiter, lander, penetrators. Planned for 1996, it failed at launch. A planned repeat of this mission, Mars 98, was cancelled due to lack of funding. The U.S. Mars Pathfinder was launched in December 1996 and released
2035-456: The lander's impact rather than utilizing more traditional landing gear. When a high-velocity impact is intentionally planned in order to study the consequences of impact, the spacecraft is called an impactor. Several terrestrial bodies have been subject to lander or impactor exploration. Among them are Earth's Moon ; the planets Venus , Mars , and Mercury ; Saturn's moon Titan ; asteroids ; and comets . Beginning with Luna 2 in 1959,
2090-417: The lunar south pole, close to the crater Manzinus U. This made it the first lander to soft land at the south pole of the Moon. Japan became the fifth country to land a lunar probe on 19 January 2024, by successfully landing its SLIM lander . On 22 February 2024, Intuitive Machine's Odysseus successfully landed on the Moon after taking off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 . This was the first successful landing of
2145-484: The mission to Phobos to 2016 with lander and sample return, but it stayed as a project. Since 2007 the Canadian Space Agency has considered a mission to Phobos called Phobos Reconnaissance and International Mars Exploration (PRIME), which would include an orbiter and lander. Recent proposals include a 2008 NASA Glenn Research Center Phobos and Deimos sample return mission, the 2013 Phobos Surveyor , and
2200-436: The multi-aimed Soviet mission, was developed in cooperation with European countries for realization in 1991–1994 but canceled due to the Soviet Union disbanding. It included a flyby of Mars, where Vesta would deliver an aerostat (balloon or airship) and small landers or penetrators, followed by flybys of Ceres or 4 Vesta and some other asteroids with the impact of a large penetrator on one of them. The first landing on
2255-417: The need for malfunction-prone pumps utilized in most rocket technology. Mission requirements obliged the vehicle to be able to descend from an equatorial or high-inclination lunar orbit to a polar landing site, along with bringing it and the Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit, as the Orion spacecraft's onboard Aerojet AJ-10 rocket engine and the amount of fuel it carried would have been insufficient to brake
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2310-480: The planet on 18 March 2011. Following a mapping mission, MESSENGER was directed to impact Mercury's surface on 30 April 2015. The spacecraft's impact with Mercury occurred near 3:26 pm EDT on 30 April 2015, leaving a crater estimated to be 16 m in diameter. The ESA's AIDA mission concept would investigate the effects of impact crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid. The DART spacecraft impacted asteroid 65803 Didymos 's moon Dimorphos in 2022, and
2365-470: The planet's atmosphere. All four landers used an aeroshell-like heat shield during atmospheric entry . Mars 2 and Mars 3 landers carried the first small skis-walking Mars rovers , PrOP-M , that did not work on the planet. The Soviet Union planned the heavy Marsokhod Mars 4NM mission in 1973 and the Mars sample return Mars 5NM mission in 1975, but neither occurred due to needing the N1 super-launcher that
2420-504: The spacecraft aims to retrieve a minimum of 10 g of samples. MMX will return to Earth in 2029. The Huygens probe, carried to Saturn 's moon Titan by Cassini , was specifically designed to survive landing on land or on liquid. It was thoroughly drop-tested to make sure it could withstand impact and continue functioning for at least three minutes. However, due to the low-speed impact, it continued providing data for more than two hours after it landed. The landing on Titan in 2005
2475-501: The surface of these satellites. Two probes under the Soviet Phobos program were successfully launched in 1988, but in 1989 the intended landings on Phobos and Deimos were not conducted due to failures in the spacecraft system. The post-Soviet Russian Fobos-Grunt probe was an intended sample return mission to Phobos in 2012 but failed after launch in 2011. In 2007 European Space Agency and EADS Astrium proposed and developed
2530-543: Was approximately 200 m wide and 30–50 m deep, and scientists detected the presence of silicates , carbonates , smectite , amorphous carbon and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons . The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India's national space agency, was a lunar probe that was released on 14 November 2008 by ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 lunar remote sensing orbiter. Chandrayaan-1
2585-428: Was based on that of a cylinder. Initially a horizontal cylinder, like that of the LM (despite the "boxy" appearance on the outside), contemporary blueprints and computer simulations showed the use of a vertical cylinder. Unlike its two-man Apollo ancestor, Altair was designed to carry the entire four-person crew to the surface, while the temporarily unoccupied Orion crew module would have remained in lunar orbit. Altair
2640-409: Was canceled in 2006. NASA's Europa Clipper is planned to explore Jupiter's moons, particularly Europa , starting in 2030. NASA considered a lander or impactor to fly alongside Europa Clipper , but ultimately declined. As Europa is hypothesized to have water beneath its icy surface , these missions are sent to investigate its habitability and assess its astrobiological potential by confirming
2695-543: Was declared effectively dead, having exceeded its three-month design lifetime by well over a decade. The U.S. spacecraft Phoenix successfully achieved soft landing on the surface of Mars on 25 May 2008, using a combination of parachutes and rocket descent engines. Mars Science Laboratory , which carried the rover Curiosity , was launched by NASA on 26 November 2011. It landed in the Aeolis Palus region of Gale Crater on Mars on 6 August 2012. China launched
2750-632: Was ever established and Beagle 2 was declared lost on 6 February 2004. The proposed 2009 British Beagle 3 lander mission to search for life, past or present, was not adopted. The American Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity were launched in June and July 2003. They reached the Martian surface in January 2004 using landers featuring airbags and parachutes to soften impact. Spirit ceased functioning in 2010, more than five years past its design lifetime. As of 13 February 2019, Opportunity
2805-568: Was intended to be capable of operating away from Earth (in space and on the lunar surface) for up to 210 Earth days. Altair would also be capable of flying uncrewed missions, as had been proposed with LM Truck concept during the Apollo Applications Program . Mission planners would have been able to choose among three distinct mission modes for Altair: Altair, like the LM, was planned to have two hatches; one on top for docking and internal transfer between Altair and Orion, and
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#17327802247062860-400: Was launched on 22 October 2008. It led to the discovery of the presence of water on the Moon . The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was a robotic spacecraft operated by NASA to perform a lower-cost means of determining the nature of hydrogen detected at the polar regions of the Moon . The main LCROSS mission objective was to explore the presence of water ice in
2915-525: Was never flown successfully. A double-launching Soviet Mars 5M (Mars-79) sample return mission was planned for 1979 but cancelled due to complexity and technical problems. NASA 's Viking 1 and Viking 2 were launched respectively in August and September 1975, each comprising an orbiter vehicle and a lander. Viking 1 landed in July 1976 Viking 2 in September 1976. The Viking program rovers were
2970-608: Was separated with the orbiter and returner before landing on 1 June 2024 at 22:23 UTC. It landed on the Moon's surface on 1 June 2024. The ascender was launched back to lunar orbit on 3 June 2024 at 23:38 UTC, carrying samples collected by the lander, and later completed another robotic rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit. The sample container was then transferred to the returner, which landed in Inner Mongolia on 25 June 2024, completing China's far side extraterrestrial sample return mission. The Soviet Venera program included
3025-574: Was the first, and to date only, landing on any planet's satellite other than Earth's moon. The proposed U.S. Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) mission considered a lander that would splash down in a lake in Titan's northern hemisphere and float on the surface of the lake for few months. Spain's proposed Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer (TALISE) mission is similar to the TiME lander but has its own propulsion system for controlling shipping. Vesta ,
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