A private Moon mission hopes to succeed where others have failed

Editor’s note (February 15th 2024): This article has been updated.

LANDING ON THE Moon is difficult. Of the five robotic landers that have made the attempt in the past year, only two succeeded. Both successful landers were sent by national space agencies—those of India and Japan—though the Japanese probe, called SLIM, suffered an engine failure and landed upside down. Luna 25, a lander sent by Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, collided with the lunar surface after going into the wrong orbit. Two landers from private companies also failed: HAKUTO-R, sent by a Japanese firm, crashed during landing, and Peregrine, made by Astrobotic, an American company, suffered a propellant leak and never made it to the Moon.