Half a century after the Apollo astronauts left the last bootprints in lunar dust, the Moon has once again become a destination of fierce ambition and delicate engineering.

This time, it’s not just superpowers racing to plant flags, but also private companies, multinational partnerships and robotic scouts aiming to unlock the Moon’s secrets and lay the groundwork for future human return.

So far in 2025, lunar exploration has surged forward. Several notable missions have launched toward or landed on the Moon. Each has navigated the long journey through space and the even trickier descent to the Moon’s surface or into orbit with varying degrees of success. Together, these missions reflect both the promise and difficulty of returning to the Moon in this new space race defined by innovation, competition and collaboration.

As an aerospace engineer specialising in guidance, navigation and control technologies, I’m deeply interested in how each mission – whether successful or not – adds to scientists’ collective understanding. These missions can help engineers learn to navigate the complexities of space, operate in hostile lunar environments and steadily advance toward a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

Why is landing on the Moon so hard?

Lunar exploration remains one of the most technically demanding frontiers in modern spaceflight. Choosing a landing site involves complex trade-offs between scientific interest, terrain safety and Sun exposure.

The lunar south pole is an especially attractive area, as it could contain water in the form of ice in shadowed craters, a critical resource for future missions. Other sites may hold clues about volcanic activity on the Moon or the solar system’s early history.

Each mission trajectory must be calculated with precision to make sure the craft arrives and descends at the right time and place. Engineers must account for the Moon’s constantly changing position in its orbit around Earth, the timing of launch windows and the gravitational forces acting on the spacecraft throughout its journey.

They also need to carefully plan the spacecraft’s path so that it arrives at the right angle and speed for a safe approach. Even small miscalculations early on can lead to major errors in landing location – or a missed opportunity entirely.

Once on the surface, the landers need to survive extreme swings in temperature – from highs over 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) in daylight down to lows of -208 F (-133 C) at night – as well as dust, radiation and delayed communication with Earth. The spacecraft’s power systems, heat control, landing legs and communication links must all function perfectly. Meanwhile, these landers must avoid hazardous terrain and rely on sunlight to power their instruments and recharge their batteries.

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

Commercial companies face the same technical hurdles as government agencies but often with tighter budgets, smaller teams and less heritage hardware. Unlike government missions, which can draw on decades of institutional experience and infrastructure, many commercial lunar efforts are navigating these challenges for the first time.

Successful landings and hard lessons for CLPS

Several lunar missions launched this year belong to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. CLPS is an initiative that contracts private companies to deliver science and technology payloads to the Moon. Its aim is to accelerate exploration while lowering costs and encouraging commercial innovation.

An illustration of a lander, which looks like a mechanical box with small suport legs, on the lunar surface. — An artist’s rendering of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which navigated and avoided hazards during its final descent to the surface. NASA/GSFC/Rani Gran/Wikimedia Commons

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

The lander survived the harsh lunar day and transmitted data for nearly two weeks before losing power during the freezing lunar night – a typical operational limit for most unheated lunar landers.

Blue Ghost demonstrated how commercial landers can shoulder critical parts of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade.

The second CLPS launch of the year, Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, launched in late February. It targeted a scientifically intriguing site near the Moon’s south pole region.

An illustration of a lander, a rectangular machine on triangular legs, on the lunar surface. — An artist’s rendering of Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, which is scheduled to land near the lunar south pole for in-situ resource utilisation demonstration on the Moon. NASA/Intuitive Machines

The Nova-C lander, named Athena, touched down on March 6 close to the south pole. However, during the landing process, Athena tipped over. Since it landed on its side in a crater with uneven terrain, it couldn’t deploy its solar panels to generate power, which ended the mission early.

While Athena’s tipped-over landing meant it couldn’t do all the scientific explorations it had planned, the data it returned is still valuable for understanding how future landers can avoid similar fates on the rugged polar terrain.

Not all lunar missions need to land. NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a small lunar orbiter launched in February alongside IM-2, was intended to orbit the Moon and map the form, abundance and distribution of water in the form of ice, especially in shadowed craters near the poles.

Shortly after launch, however, NASA lost contact with the spacecraft. Engineers suspect the spacecraft may have experienced a power issue, potentially leaving its batteries depleted.

NASA is continuing recovery efforts, hoping that the spacecraft’s solar panels may recharge in May and June.

An illustration of Lunar Trailblazer, which looks like a mechanical box with two solar panel wings. — An artist’s rendering of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft. If recovered, it will orbit the Moon to measure the form and distribution of water on the lunar surface. Lockheed Martin Space

Ongoing and future missions

Launched on the same day as the Blue Ghost mission in January, Japanese company ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 (Resilience) is on its way to the Moon and has successfully entered lunar orbit.

The lander carried out a successful flyby of the Moon on Feb. 15, with an expected landing in early June. Although launched at the same time, Resilience took a longer trajectory than Blue Ghost to save energy. This maneuver also allowed the spacecraft to collect bonus science observations while looping around the Moon.

The mission, if successful, will advance Japan’s commercial space sector and prove an important comeback for ispace after its first lunar lander crashed during its final descent in 2023.

The rest of 2025 promises a busy lunar calendar. Intuitive Machines plans to launch IM-3 in late 2025 to test more advanced instruments and potentially deliver NASA scientific experiments to the Moon.

The European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder will establish a dedicated lunar communications satellite, making it easier for future missions, especially those operating on the far side or poles, to stay in touch with Earth.

Meanwhile, Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission-1 is scheduled to deliver NASA’s VIPER rover to the Moon’s south pole, where it will directly search for ice beneath the surface.

Together, these missions represent an increasingly international and commercial approach to lunar science and exploration.

As the world turns its attention to the Moon, every mission – whether triumph or setback – brings humanity closer to a permanent return to our closest celestial neighbour.

Zhenbo Wang is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Tennessee
This article first appeared in The Conversation