Race to the Moon
173 rows: every spacecraft that left Earth for the Moon, every launch attempt that did not, and the missions on today’s manifests. Launch dates are UTC; where a local date differs it is shown beside it. Claims no source could confirm carry an “Unconfirmed” label.
Data reviewed against sources as of · All dates UTC unless a local time is shown
Showing 11 of 173. Download the full catalogue (CSV), free to reuse with attribution to SpaceNexus (CC BY 4.0; how to cite). Missions with their own page are linked by name. Landing attempts only: every Moon landing attempt.
| Launch (UTC) | Mission | Result | Key events, firsts, sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch: | Hiten (MUSES-A) + HagoromoJP (Japan)ISAS · Orbiter | Partial |
Firsts: First lunar mission by a country other than the US or USSR; Demonstrated aerobraking (first pass 19 Mar 1991) Hiten itself worked; its Hagoromo sub-probe’s transmitter failed. Sources: NASA NSSDCA (updated 10 Jul 2025) · NASA History Division (A. Siddiqi) (Sep 2018) |
| Launch: | Kaguya / SELENE (+ Okina, Ouna)JP (Japan)JAXA · Orbiter | Success |
Unconfirmed (reported but not confirmed by a primary source):
Sources: NASA NSSDCA (updated 10 Jul 2025) · NASA History Division (A. Siddiqi) (Sep 2018) |
| Launch: | OMOTENASHI (Artemis I cubesat)JP (Japan)JAXA · Lander | Failure |
Would have been the smallest lunar lander. Sources: NASA NSSDCA (updated 10 Jul 2025) |
| Launch: | EQUULEUS (Artemis I cubesat)JP (Japan)JAXA + University of Tokyo · Flyby | Success |
Unconfirmed (reported but not confirmed by a primary source):
Sources: NASA NSSDCA (updated 10 Jul 2025) |
| Launch: | Hakuto-R Mission 1 (+ Rashid, SORA-Q)JP (Japan)ispace (private) · Lander + roverPartners: UAE MBRSC (Rashid rover); JAXA (SORA-Q) | Failure |
Firsts: First private Japanese landing attempt; First Arab-built lunar rover (lost with the lander) ispace (26 May 2023): the lander estimated its altitude as zero while it was about 5 km above the surface, ran out of propellant and is believed to have fallen; the most likely cause was that “the software did not perform as expected”. Sources: ispace (26 May 2023) · NASA NSSDCA (updated 10 Jul 2025) |
| Launch: | SLIM (+ LEV-1, LEV-2/SORA-Q)JP (Japan)JAXA · Lander | Success |
Firsts: First "pinpoint" landing: position error of about 10 m or less before the obstacle-avoidance manoeuvre; Japan became the fifth nation to soft-land |
| Launch: | Hakuto-R Mission 2 "Resilience" (+ Tenacious)JP (Japan)ispace · Lander + rover | Failure |
ispace (24 Jun 2025): the technical cause was “an anomaly in the LRF [laser range finder] hardware”; valid measurements came late and the lander could not slow down enough. Sources: ispace (24 Jun 2025) · NASA NSSDCA (updated 10 Jul 2025) |
| Launch: | ispace Mission 2.5 (first Lunar Connect relay satellite)JP (Japan)ispace (satellite); delivered to lunar orbit by Argo Space · RelayPartners: Argo Space (Argonaut transfer vehicle) | Scheduled | One satellite, Alpine, the first of ispace’s Lunar Connect constellation ("at least five satellites orbiting the Moon" planned) for communication and positioning. Argo Space carries it to lunar orbit on its water-powered Argonaut vehicle; the delivery contract was finalised on 17 Sep 2026. |
| Launch: | ispace Mission 3 (ULTRA lander)JP (Japan)ispace · Lander | Scheduled | Formerly Mission 4; METI SBIR funded. Launch contracted on an MHI H3 rocket (29 Jul 2026). |
| Launch: | ispace Mission 4JP (Japan)ispace · Lander | Scheduled | Formerly Mission 6; Space Strategy Fund. Sources: ispace (27 Mar 2026) |
| Launch: – | CP-12 far-side delivery (Draper / ispace-U.S.; ispace’s Mission 5)JP (Japan)ispace-U.S. + Draper (NASA CLPS) · Lander | Cancelled | Schrödinger basin on the far side. Slipped from 2026 to 2027 (May 2025), then to 2030 after an engine-vendor change (ispace, 27 Mar 2026). On 15 Jul 2026 ispace announced that Draper “has mutually agreed with NASA to end” CLPS task order CP-12; ispace-U.S. plans to bid under the next CLPS framework instead. Sources: ispace (15 Jul 2026) · ispace (27 Mar 2026) · ispace-U.S. (9 May 2025) |
Licence: this data is published under CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International). Use it, share it and adapt it, commercially too, with credit to SpaceNexus and a link. It is our own compilation from the public sources linked on every row; quoted statements and those sources remain their owners’, and the illustrations are not part of the dataset.
Suggested citation
SpaceNexus. (2026). Race to the Moon: catalogue of lunar missions since 1958 (Version 2026-09-24) [Data set]. https://spacenexus.us/moon/missions. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
@misc{spacenexus_moon_catalogue_20260924,
author = {{SpaceNexus}},
title = {Race to the Moon: catalogue of lunar missions since 1958},
year = {2026},
version = {2026-09-24},
howpublished = {\url{https://spacenexus.us/moon/missions}},
note = {Licensed CC BY 4.0},
}Version 2026-09-24: the date the data was last reviewed against its sources. Download: CSV (UTF-8).
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