A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2024, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 1972 during the United States' Apollo Program. Several robotic landers have reached the surface, and some have returned samples to Earth.
The design requirements for these landers depend on factors imposed by the payload, flight rate, propulsive requirements, and configuration constraints.[1] Other important design factors include overall energy requirements, mission duration, the type of mission operations on the lunar surface, and life support system if crewed. The relatively high gravity (higher than all known asteroids, but lower than all Solar System planets) and lack of lunar atmosphere negates the use of aerobraking, so a lander must use propulsion to decelerate and achieve a soft landing.
- ^ Mulqueen, John A. (1993). "Lunar Lander Stage Requirements Based on the Civil Needs Data Base" (PDF). NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-10-01.