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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | NASA | NASA | NASA |
| Status | Deorbited | Mission Complete | Mission Complete |
| Mission type | Orbiter | Orbiter | Impactor |
| Launch date | 1998-01-06 | 2013-09-06 | 2009-06-18 |
| End date | 1999-07-31 | 2014-04-17 | 2009-10-09 |
| Orbit | 100 km circular polar orbit (lowered to 15-30 km for extended mission) | Low equatorial orbit ~50 km (primary); final phase 2-5 km altitude | Elliptical shepherding orbit; impacted Cabeus crater |
| Mass | 158 kgas of [1]One of the smallest and lowest-cost ($63M) NASA lunar orbiters | 383 kgas of [1] | 891 kgas of [1]LCROSS + Centaur upper stage (2,366 kg total impact); Centaur impacted first ↑ Heaviest |
| Instruments | 5 instrumentsas of [1] | 3 science instruments + 1 tech demoas of [1] ↑ Most instruments | 9 instrumentsas of [1] |
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| Outcome | 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. | NASA Discovery-class orbiter that characterized the tenuous lunar atmosphere (exosphere) and dust environment. LADEE's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration achieved 622 Mbps download from lunar orbit — a record at the time. Controlled impact on the lunar far side on 17 April 2014. | 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. |
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.