Moon landing
Enable an AI agent to recognise a Moon landing attempt, assess its progress and outcome, and determine which landing-related actions are supported by evidence and authority.
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
Researched by: Codex + Grok
Purpose and description
Enable an AI agent to recognise a Moon landing attempt, assess its progress and outcome, and determine which landing-related actions are supported by evidence and authority.
A Moon landing is a spacecraft event in which a vehicle, crewed or robotic, makes contact with the solid surface of Earth's Moon, treated in mission design, space law, and historiography as a distinct mission outcome from lunar flyby, orbit, or Earth return, and split in practice into soft landings that leave an intact surface element and hard landings or impacts that do not.
It can be Identify a lunar landing attempt and distinguish it from orbiting, deliberate impact and later surface activity.; Compare the estimated descent state and touchdown conditions with mission-specific landing criteria.; Track whether the intended landing region remains reachable within declared terrain and control constraints.; Recommend continuation, holding where supported, diversion or abort assessment within documented vehicle capabilities.; Reconcile contact indications, telemetry and surface observations into an evidence-qualified outcome.; Determine whether landing closure and handover to surface operations are justified..
Distinguishing features
The intended destination is the Moon's physical surface; a lunar flyby or orbit insertion does not qualify.
The attempt seeks controlled surface arrival against declared contact conditions; an intentional impact without a landing objective belongs elsewhere.
A failed descent remains a Moon landing attempt, but surface collision alone does not establish a successful landing.
Touchdown and post-contact stability are assessed separately; reaching the surface does not by itself establish an operational landing.
The record represents a landing occurrence or attempt, rather than the spacecraft, landing site or entire lunar mission.
Scope
+ Identity, objectives and boundaries of a particular lunar landing attempt
+ Intended landing region, touchdown constraints and local surface conditions
+ Descent progression, navigation confidence and remaining control capability
+ Surface contact, settling, stability and immediate landing outcome
+ Landing-specific decisions, contingencies and evidence supporting state assessments
- Launch and Earth departure, owned by launch and transfer activity models
- General spacecraft design, manufacturing and maintenance
- Lunar orbital operations outside their role as landing prerequisites
- Extended surface exploration, experiments and settlement operations
- Ascent, rendezvous and return to Earth after the landing
- Deliberate lunar impact missions whose objective excludes controlled landing
Characteristics
- Landing configuration
- Crewed or uncrewed; participating vehicle and landing configuration identified Determines which survival, control and immediate surface conditions must be assessed.
- Attempt phase
- Planned, awaiting descent, descending, contact suspected, settling, surface state established, aborted, failed or unresolved Separates intended activity from observed progress and constrains available actions.
- Landing region and reference frame
- Target region and estimated touchdown location linked to a named lunar coordinate frame and uncertainty region Makes site compliance, terrain assessment and location claims interpretable.
- Surface-relative motion
- Height above local terrain in m; vertical and horizontal velocity in m/s; timestamp and uncertainty Supports assessment of descent progress and compatibility with declared touchdown limits.
- Touchdown attitude and support
- Orientation and local slope in degrees; estimated supporting contacts and uncertainty Helps distinguish initial contact from a stable, usable surface condition.
- Remaining landing control margin
- Available versus required propellant in kg, control time in s, or another explicitly defined mission margin Indicates whether continuation, site diversion or a declared contingency remains feasible.
- Landing outcome
- Pending, criteria met, partially met, criteria not met or indeterminate; evaluated against named criteria Prevents a generic success label from hiding differences between contact, survival, stability and usability.
- Decision authority
- Responsible crew, ground operator or onboard controller linked to permitted landing decisions Separates an agent's assessment or recommendation from authority to command the vehicle.
Where this came from
wikidata · CC0 1.0
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 6 bundles · 11 layers · 18 findings · 28 questions.
Landing intent and boundaries Establishes which lunar arrival attempt is being assessed and what counts as completing it.
An agent must distinguish the landing attempt from the wider mission and evaluate it against explicit landing objectives.
Attempt identity
Identifies the vehicle, lunar destination and intended mode of surface arrival.
Controlled lunar arrival
Record the evidence that this activity intends a controlled landing on the Moon, including whether the intention was later abandoned.
- Which vehicle and declared objective establish this as a lunar landing attempt? definition
- What distinguishes this attempt from a deliberate impact, orbital manoeuvre or separate repeat attempt? boundary
Completion contract
Defines the landing interval and criteria used to judge its outcome.
Landing completion criteria
Record separate requirements for surface arrival, vehicle survival, stable support and readiness for the next activity.
- Which declared conditions distinguish successful touchdown, successful landing and readiness for surface operations? definition
- At what event does this landing attempt begin, and when does responsibility pass to a surface-operation model? boundary
Lunar site and contact envelope Captures where the vehicle may land and which local conditions permit acceptable contact.
A lunar landing must be judged against reachable surface terrain and vehicle-specific touchdown tolerances.
Target and terrain
Relates the intended landing region to terrain knowledge and location uncertainty.
Acceptable touchdown region
Record target boundaries, excluded terrain, location estimates and the observations supporting them.
- What target and exclusion regions apply, and in which lunar reference frame are they expressed? boundary
- What terrain observations support estimates of slope, obstacles and surface support, and what remains unresolved? provenance
Contact constraints
Defines the permitted combination of motion, orientation and surface conditions at arrival.
Touchdown envelope
Record mission-specific contact limits and how estimated touchdown conditions compare with them.
- What limits apply to vertical speed, lateral speed, attitude, local slope and supporting surface conditions? measurement
- How do lighting, terrain visibility and descent-induced dust affect confidence in selecting an acceptable contact point? measurement
Descent and control feasibility Tracks progress toward the lunar surface and whether the vehicle retains the ability to achieve its landing conditions.
An agent needs the relationship between estimated motion, navigation uncertainty and remaining control capability to assess continuation.
Surface-relative descent
Captures the estimated trajectory relative to local lunar terrain.
Descent state confidence
Record terrain-relative height, velocity, predicted contact location and the confidence attached to each estimate.
- What are the latest terrain-relative height, vertical and lateral velocity, predicted contact location and associated uncertainties? measurement
- Which measurements support these estimates, and are their timestamps and reference frames consistent? provenance
Reachable landing options
Relates remaining control capability to the target and any supported alternatives.
Landing control margin
Record whether propulsion, attitude control, energy and navigation capabilities support the remaining descent or a documented alternative.
- What remaining control margins support reaching an acceptable surface region within the touchdown envelope? measurement
- Which site changes or descent adjustments remain feasible under the current vehicle state and documented operating rules? action
Contact and surface establishment Distinguishes indications of touchdown from a settled surface condition and immediate vehicle usability.
Surface contact can precede bouncing, sliding, tipping or loss of function, so landing outcome requires more than a contact signal.
Contact sequence
Tracks initial contact and subsequent motion until the surface state is established or remains unresolved.
Touchdown and settling
Record contact indications, their timing and evidence of continued motion or stable support.
- Which observations establish initial lunar surface contact, and how precisely is its time known? provenance
- What evidence distinguishes a settled vehicle from bouncing, sliding, tipping or an unresolved contact state? measurement
Immediate surface condition
Assesses the vehicle and any crew against conditions required to close the landing activity.
Landing survival and usability
Record structural condition, orientation, essential services and crew condition where applicable without assuming they share one outcome.
- Which landing completion criteria are met, failed or still unverified after settling? measurement
- Which immediate stabilisation or safing actions are required before handover to surface operations? action
Landing decisions and evidence Connects landing assessments to authorised decisions and traceable outcome claims.
An agent must know both whether a landing action is supported and whether the evidence justifies the reported outcome.
Contingency authority
Defines who may act during descent and which contingencies exist for this vehicle and phase.
Authorised landing response
Record decision authority, triggering conditions and supported responses without assuming every vehicle can abort or pause descent.
- Who or what may command continuation, diversion, abort or safing during each landing phase? action
- Which documented triggers require a response, and how do communication delay or loss affect execution authority? action
Outcome evidence
Maintains the basis for phase and outcome assessments, including contradictory or missing observations.
Evidence-qualified landing outcome
Record the evidence supporting each outcome criterion and preserve uncertainty when contact, survival or location cannot be confirmed.
- Which telemetry, imagery or other observations support each reported landing outcome criterion? provenance
- What additional evidence would resolve conflicting reports or distinguish communication loss from physical landing failure? measurement
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Kinds and varieties
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Crewed lunar landing (Apollo-class: crew on the surface after a surviving descent stage)
- Robotic soft landing (functional lander remains on the surface)
- Intentional hard landing or kinetic impact (surface contact is the end state; no surviving lander)
- Sample-return landing (surface element plus ascent vehicle)
- Commercial or CLPS-class payload landing
- Far-side landing (requires a relay; operationally distinct from near-side)
- Polar or permanently shadowed-region landing (lighting, thermal, and volatile environment unlike mid-latitude sites)
- Failed landing attempt (intended soft landing that became a crash)
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Identifiers and schemes
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Wikidata - Q5916 - Item for the event class 'Moon landing', not a single mission.
- COSPAR international designator - YYYY-NNN[A-Z] - Identifies the landing spacecraft as a registered space object; the landing itself has no separate COSPAR code.
- NSSDCA/COSPAR ID - YYYY-NNNA - NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive catalog number for the spacecraft, typically aligned with COSPAR.
- LCSH - Lunar landing sites; Space flight to the moon - Library of Congress subject headings used in bibliographic control; there is no single LCSH for the event class alone.
- IAU planetary nomenclature - named feature on the Moon (USGS Gazetteer) - Landing locales are often recorded via approved crater, mare, or commemorative names rather than a dedicated landing-event code.
- Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Outer Space Treaty (1967), United Nations / UNOOSA - peaceful use, non-appropriation, state responsibility and supervision, harmful contamination (Art. IX).
- Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Moon Agreement, 1979), United Nations - stricter resource and heritage rules; not ratified by the United States, Russia, or China.
- Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (1972), United Nations - liability for damage caused by a landing object.
- Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space (1975), United Nations - registration of the spacecraft that lands.
- COSPAR Policy on Planetary Protection, COSPAR - lunar landers generally Category II (documentation of organic inventory; Moon is not a 'special region' in the Mars sense).
- Artemis Accords (2020-), NASA and partner states - non-binding framework on heritage sites, deconfliction, and space-resource utilisation used by several current landing programmes.
- ITU Radio Regulations, International Telecommunication Union - frequency coordination for Earth-Moon and relay links used by landers.
- NASA NPR 8715.24 (Planetary Protection Provisions for Robotic Extraterrestrial Missions), NASA - binding on NASA (and many NASA-funded) lunar landers.
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Crewed surface operations: Apollo 11-12 and 14-17 (1969-1972) landed crews for EVA, geology, and emplacement of ALSEP instruments and laser retroreflectors.
- First-of-kind robotic milestones still used as the historical baseline: Luna 2 impact (1959), Luna 9 soft landing (1966), Luna 16 sample return (1970).
- Scientific station and rover delivery: Surveyor; Lunokhod; Chang'e 3/4/5/6; Chandrayaan-3 near the south pole (2023).
- Far-side operations: Chang'e 4 with the Queqiao relay, the only class that cannot use direct Earth line-of-sight.
- Commercial delivery under NASA CLPS and similar contracts (e.g. Intuitive Machines Odysseus/IM-1, Firefly Blue Ghost), often as technology demonstration plus hosted payloads.
- Site reconnaissance and ISRU precursor work for Artemis human landing system and for the China-Russia International Lunar Research Station concept.
- Ongoing lunar laser ranging to Apollo and Lunokhod retroreflectors, which still depends on those landed objects remaining in place.
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Typical measurements
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Vertical touchdown speed (soft landing) - 0.5-3 - m/s
- Impact speed (hard landing / kinetic impactor) - 2.5-3.5 - km/s
- Landed mass (historical through present robotic and Apollo LM class) - 100-8000 - kg
- Powered-descent Δv from low lunar orbit - 1600-2500 - m/s
- Landing-location error (3σ, ellipse semi-axis) - 0.01-50 - km
- Post-landing tilt from local vertical - 0-15 (survival often specified to ~30) - degree
- Equatorial lunar night (power/thermal survival window) - ~14.8 - Earth day
- Crewed surface stay (Apollo) - 22-75 - h
- Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Descent-engine underthrust or premature cutoff while residual vertical or horizontal velocity is still unsurvivable (Vikram/Chandrayaan-2, several Luna and commercial attempts).
- Tip-over after contact from slope, residual lateral speed, or landing-gear/leg failure (Odysseus/IM-1; SLIM inverted attitude).
- Collision with boulders, crater rims, or scarps inside the landing ellipse - the dominant terrain hazard on an airless, unprepared surface.
- GNC, IMU, or altimetry error, including software that flies a correct trajectory in the wrong attitude.
- Communications loss, especially on the far side without a dedicated relay, or after a lander comes to rest with antennas buried or pointed into the soil.
- Thermal and electrical death during the ~14-day equatorial night for landers not designed to hibernate.
- Plume-surface interaction: lofted regolith scouring optics and radiators, excavating a blast crater, and (for later missions) damaging nearby hardware or heritage sites.
- Crewed-unique: failed abort-to-orbit, cabin leak after touchdown, or ascent-engine failure that strands crew on the surface; lunar dust abrasion and seal contamination during subsequent EVA.
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Popular English often treats 'the Moon landing' as a singular event (Apollo 11, 20 July 1969); specialists count many landings and split first impact / first soft / first crewed / first far-side / first polar.
- Technical English prefers 'lunar landing'; French commonly uses 'alunissage' (sometimes disputed as a false analogy to 'atterrissage'); German 'Mondlandung'; Russian emphasises мягкая посадка (soft landing) as the success criterion (Luna-9); Chinese uses 月面着陆 / 软着陆 under the Chang'e (嫦娥) programme.
- Historiography diverges: Soviet/Russian accounts lead with Luna 2 and Luna 9; US public memory leads with Apollo 11; Chinese official narrative treats Chang'e 4 (first far side) and Chang'e 5/6 (samples, including far-side sample return) as separate firsts.
- Legal practice splits: Artemis Accords partners versus Moon Agreement parties versus non-aligned programmes (notably China-Russia ILRS planning); this changes how heritage exclusion zones and resource extraction around a landing are described, not the physics of touchdown.
- India's 2023 Chandrayaan-3 success pushed 'soft landing' into general-language use there as the term of art for a completed lunar surface mission.
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Lunar orbit (orbital insertion without surface contact) - Periapsis remains above the surface; no touchdown velocity, landing legs, or surface-bearing load. Apollo 8 orbited; it did not land.
- Lunar flyby or circumlunar coast - The trajectory encounters the Moon without capture or surface contact (e.g. Luna 1, Zond free-return profiles).
- Lunar impact when catalogued separately from landing - Success is kinetic-energy delivery, not a surviving surface element; touchdown speed is kilometres per second. Some histories still call Luna 2 the first 'landing' - the test is whether mission success required a functional landed vehicle.
- Earth landing or splashdown of a returning lunar spacecraft - Surface contact is with Earth (or ocean), after trans-Earth injection; the lunar surface was never the landing body (Apollo CM, Chang'e return capsules).
- Lunar-orbit docking or undocking - Vehicle-to-vehicle contact in free space (CSM/LM), not vehicle-to-regolith.
- Moonwalk / lunar EVA - Crew activity that can occur only after a crewed landing; it is not the landing event.
- Planetary (e.g. Mars) landing - Different body; Mars uses an atmosphere (heat shield, parachute, often skycrane). The Moon is airless, so descent is fully propulsive from orbit or impact.
- 'Moonshot' as metaphor - A programme-ambition figure of speech; no spacecraft and no selenographic coordinates.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of Moon landing this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Sources
- Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies - Legal status of lunar surface activity: non-appropriation, state responsibility, and harmful-contamination duties that apply to landings.
- Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies - The stricter UN lunar regime (heritage, resources, de-militarisation) and the fact that most states that have actually landed are not parties.
- Apollo 11 Mission Report (MSC-00171) - Engineering definition of a crewed soft landing: touchdown dynamics, landed mass, site coordinates, and post-landing vehicle state.
- Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 (NASA SP-2000-4408) - First impact (Luna 2), first soft landing (Luna 9), and first robotic sample return as historically distinguished kinds, against the popular reduction of 'Moon landing' to Apollo 11.
- COSPAR Policy on Planetary Protection - Planetary-protection category for the Moon (generally Category II) and documentation expected of landing missions.
- Wikidata item Q5916, Moon landing - Catalogue identifier for the event class, as distinct from individual missions.
- Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature - IAU/USGS naming of lunar surface features used as landing-site identifiers.
- The Artemis Accords - Current non-treaty practice among many landing and would-be-landing states: heritage sites, deconfliction, and utilisation norms.
What the second pass must settle
- Does the registry intend Moon landing to cover all controlled lunar landing attempts, including robotic and failed attempts, or a narrower concept?
- Where should the model place the start of an attempt when descent initiation, deorbit and landing commitment occur at different points?
- Should repeated lunar hops be separate landing attempts linked to one mission, and what event establishes that separation?
- Which authoritative mission documents should define touchdown tolerances, contingency capabilities and completion criteria for each landing configuration?
- How should historical landings with sparse or conflicting evidence be assigned confidence without imposing modern telemetry requirements?