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 | 🇮🇳 Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter Chandrayaan-2 Active · Last updated 2026-06-01Trust: Agency-primaryⓘ Last verified Remove × | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | NASA | NASA | ISRO |
| Status | Deorbited | Mission Complete | Active |
| Mission type | Orbiter | Impactor | Orbiter-Lander |
| Launch date | 1998-01-06 | 2009-06-18 | 2019-07-22 |
| End date | 1999-07-31 | 2009-10-09 | Active |
| Orbit | 100 km circular polar orbit (lowered to 15-30 km for extended mission) | Elliptical shepherding orbit; impacted Cabeus crater | ~100 km circular polar orbit |
| Mass | 158 kgas of [1]One of the smallest and lowest-cost ($63M) NASA lunar orbiters | 891 kgas of [1]LCROSS + Centaur upper stage (2,366 kg total impact); Centaur impacted first | 2,379 kgas of [1]Combined orbiter (2,379 kg) + Vikram lander (1,471 kg) + Pragyan rover (27 kg) at launch; lander crashed Sep 2019 ↑ Heaviest |
| Instruments | 5 instrumentsas of [1] | 9 instrumentsas of [1] ↑ Most instruments | 8 instrumentsas of [1]Dual Frequency SAR, IIRS, TMC2, CLASS, OHRC, CHACE-2, DFRS, VELC |
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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'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. | The orbiter component continues functioning perfectly after the Vikram lander crash-landed on 7 September 2019. As of 2026, the orbiter's instruments are providing high-quality science data on the lunar surface composition and polar water-ice deposits. |
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.