Landing on the Moon is a very difficult feat – 2025 brings success and gaps to companies and space agencies

Half a century later, the moon once again became an ambitious and refined engineering destination.

This time, not only superpowers compete to grow flags, but private companies, multinational corporations and robot scouts aim to unlock the secrets of the moon and lay the foundation for future human rewards.

So far, in 2025, Lunar Exploration has soared forward. Several famous missions have started or landed towards the moon. Everyone has spent a long journey with varying degrees of success and a long journey in space, even more tricky descending to the moon's surface or into orbit. Together, these missions reflect the hope and difficulty of returning to the moon in this new space race defined by innovation, competition and collaboration.

As an aerospace engineer specializing in mentoring, navigation and control technologies, I add to the collective understanding of how each mission (whether successful or not). These tasks can help engineers learn to browse the complexity of space, operate in hostile lunar environments, and steadily move towards sustainable human existence on the moon.

Why landed on the moon?

Moon exploration remains one of the most technologically demanding boundaries in modern space flight. Choosing a landing site involves a complex trade-off between scientific interests, terrain safety and sun exposure.

Lunar Antarctic is a particularly attractive area because it can contain water in the form of ice in the shadow craters, a key resource for future missions. Other locations may have clues about volcanic activity in the early history of the moon or solar system.

Each task trajectory must be calculated accurately to ensure that the process arrives at the right time and location. Engineers must consider the changing position of the moon in orbit around the Earth, the timing of the launch window and the gravity acting on the spacecraft throughout the journey.

They also need to carefully plan the path of the spacecraft to achieve safe speeds at right angles and speeds. Even small miscalculations can lead to major errors in the landing site or a complete missed opportunity.

Once surfaced, the lander needs to survive the extreme sway of temperatures – from sunlight at 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) to lows as low as -208 f (-133 c) at night – as well as dust, dust, radiation, radiation and delayed communication with the earth. The spacecraft's power system, thermal control, login legs and communication links must operate perfectly. At the same time, these landers must avoid dangerous terrain and rely on the sun to power the instrument and recharge the battery.

These challenges help explain why many landers crash or have experienced partial failures, even though the technology has come a long way since the Apollo era.

Commercial companies face the same technical barriers as government agencies, but usually have higher budgets, smaller teams and less legacy hardware. Unlike government missions that can leverage decades of institutional experience and infrastructure, many commercial moon efforts have addressed these challenges for the first time.

Tough Courses for Successful Landing and CLP

Several lunar missions launched this year belong to NASA's commercial lunar payload service program. CLPS is an initiative that enables private companies to contract to deliver scientific and technological payloads to the moon. The purpose is to accelerate exploration while reducing costs and encouraging commercial innovation.

Illustration of a Rand machine on a mechanical box on the surface of the moon, looking like a mechanical box with small spring legs on it. — The artist's rendering of the Blue Ghost Lander of Firefly Aerospace, which caused and avoided the danger when it last dropped to the surface. NASA/GSFC/Rani Gran/Wikimedia Commons

The first lunar mission in 2025 is Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, launched in January and landed successfully in early March.

The lander survived the demanding Lunar Day and transferred nearly two weeks of data before losing power on frozen Lunar Nights, a typical operating limit for most unheated lunar landings.

Blue Ghost shows how commercial landers can mask key parts of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts later in the decade.

The second CLPS was launched this year, and the IM-2 mission for intuitive machines was launched in late February. It targets a scientifically interesting location near the Antarctic region of the Moon.

Illustration of landing machine on the surface of the moon, rectangular machine on the triangle legs. — The artist's rendering of the IM-2 mission of the Intuitive Machine, which is planned to land near Lunar South Pole on the moon for a demonstration of on-site resource utilization on the moon. NASA/Intuitive Machine

Nova-C Lander (named Athena) approaches the Antarctic on March 6. However, during the landing, Athena tilted. As it lands on one side of a crater with uneven terrain, its solar panels cannot be deployed to generate electricity, thus ending the mission as early as possible.

While Athena's tilt landing means it cannot complete all the scientific explorations of its plans, the data it returns remains valuable for understanding how future landers avoid avoiding similar fates on solid polar terrain.

Not all lunar missions require landing. NASA's Lunar Trail Blazers are small moon orbits launched in February with IM-2, with the aim of orbiting the moon and drawing the form of water in the form of ice, richness and moisture, especially among shadow struters near the pole.

However, shortly after the launch, NASA lost contact with the spacecraft. Engineers suspect the spacecraft may have encountered power problems that could drain the battery.

NASA is continuing to resume work, hoping that the spacecraft's solar panels can be charged in May and June.

The illustration of Lunar Trail Blazer, which looks like a mechanical box with two solar panel wings on it. — Artist rendering of NASA's Lunar Trail Blazer spacecraft. If restored, it will rotate around the moon to measure the form and distribution of water on the moon's surface. Lockheed Martin Space

Continuous and future missions

The Hakuto-R Mission 2 (Elastic) of Japanese company Ispace, launched in January the same day as the Blue Ghost Mission launch, is about to enter the moon and successfully entered the Lunar Orbit.

The landers successfully made a successful moon flight on February 15 and are expected to land in early June. Despite being launched at the same time, elasticity takes longer tracks than the Blue Ghost to save energy. This operation also allows spacecraft to collect rewards for scientific observations as they cycle around the moon.

The mission, if successful, will promote Japan's commercial space field and is a major comeback for ISPACE after its first moon rand (Lunar Lander) crashed during its last descent in 2023.

On a platform in the white room, a lander (looks like a large box with metal sides). — Lunar Lander was launched a few days before the payload treatment facility at the U.S. Space Force power station. Elastic Rand has completed Earth's orbit and moon flight. Now, it is completing a low-energy transfer orbit and entering orbit around the moon. Business Line

The rest of 2025 promises a busy calendar. The intuitive machine plans to launch the IM-3 by the end of 2025 to test more advanced instruments and potentially provide NASA scientific experiments to the moon.

European Space Agency's Lunar Pathfinder will build a dedicated lunar communications satellite to make future missions easier, especially those in the far end or Poles, that can keep in touch with the Earth.

Meanwhile, the Griffin Mission-1 of Astronomy plans to transport NASA's Viper Rover to the South Pole of the Moon, where it will search for ice directly under the ground.

Together, these missions represent an increasing number of international and commercial approaches to the realization of lunar science and exploration.

As the world shifts its attention to the moon, each mission (whether victory or setback) brings humanity closer to the permanent return of our closest celestial neighbors.