Mass Value Report for August 2023

Mass to low Earth orbit only gets you so far. We want to get mass to somewhere interesting - starting with the Moon.

In the last month, there have been two attempts at landing on the Moon; the failed Russian Luna 25 mission, and the successful Indian Chandrayaan 3 mission. This landing is the first by a nation other than China this century, and many other attempts have failed (including a prior one by India).

There are soon to be many more missions to the surface of the Moon - unmanned landers from many countries, and then a manned landing by the US currently scheduled for 2025 (although near certain to slip). This month I’ve decided to review what the current state of technology for putting things on the Moon is.

Moon Landers Around The World

I will with a quick review of some landers that have or will soon fly. For these comparisons, I’m going to be mainly using the total mass that can be landed on the Moon’s surface, as this is easier to define with public information than payload, across all the cases. The distinction can be tricky as well - for instance, are the landing legs and other structural …