Pick up to 4 missions to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it.
Six nations have placed lunar orbiters since 2007 — a 4× increase in 15 years.
| Attribute | 🇪🇺 SMART-1 (Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology) Trust: Agency-primaryⓘ Last verified Remove × | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | NASA | NASA | ESA |
| Status | Mission Complete | Deorbited | Deorbited |
| Mission type | Impactor | Orbiter | Orbiter |
| Launch date | 2009-06-18 | 1998-01-06 | 2003-09-27 |
| End date | 2009-10-09 | 1999-07-31 | 2006-09-03 |
| Orbit | Elliptical shepherding orbit; impacted Cabeus crater | 100 km circular polar orbit (lowered to 15-30 km for extended mission) | Polar orbit ~300 × 3,000 km (spiraled from GTO over 14 months using ion drive) |
| Mass | 891 kgas of [1]LCROSS + Centaur upper stage (2,366 kg total impact); Centaur impacted first ↑ Heaviest | 158 kgas of [1]One of the smallest and lowest-cost ($63M) NASA lunar orbiters | 367 kgas of [1] |
| Instruments | 9 instrumentsas of [1] ↑ Most instruments | 5 instrumentsas of [1] | 4 instrumentsas of [1]AMIE camera, SIR near-IR spectrometer, D-CIXS X-ray spectrometer, XSM X-ray solar monitor |
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| Outcome | NASA's low-cost ($79M) impactor mission co-launched with LRO. The Centaur upper stage struck Cabeus crater on October 9, 2009, ejecting a plume of material that LCROSS analyzed as it flew through it before also impacting. This definitively confirmed water-ice in permanently shadowed craters — one of the most important planetary science results of the 2000s. | A low-cost ($63M) NASA Discovery mission that made one of the most important lunar discoveries of the late 20th century: strong evidence for water-ice at both poles. Deliberately impacted the lunar south pole at mission end; no detectable water plume was observed, but this was attributed to unfavorable geometry. | ESA's first mission to the Moon and Europe's first use of Hall-effect ion propulsion in deep space. SMART-1 took 14 months to spiral from GTO to lunar orbit using its ion engine, validating technology for future missions. Deliberately impacted the Moon's near side on 3 September 2006. |
All 11 lunar orbital missions with primary-source citations from NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO, CNSA, and NASA NSSDCA. Coverage spans Clementine (1994) through LRO (active 2026). Pure URL state — bookmark or share the link and the comparison reproduces exactly.