Pick up to 4 vehicles to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it. No JavaScript required.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator | CNSA | ispace | SpaceX |
| Prime contractor | China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) | ispace | SpaceX |
| Status | Landed | Lost | In development |
| Customer | CNSA | private | NASA-HLS |
| Launch date | 2024-05-03 | 2022-12-11 | 2027 (NET — Artemis III) |
| Landing date | 2024-06-01 | 2023-04-25 | — |
| Landing site | Apollo crater, South Pole-Aitken Basin (lunar far side) | Atlas crater, Mare Frigoris (planned; impacted at altitude ~5 km) | Lunar south pole (NASA-curated candidate region near 84-90°S) |
| Payload | 1,935.3 g of lunar far-side regolith returned to Earth (2024-06-25) | Rashid rover (10 kg, UAE/MBRSC) + Sora-Q (0.25 kg, JAXA) + commercial (2023-04-25) | ~100 tonnes to lunar surface (sustained variant target) (2024-04-16) |
| Contract value | — | — | $2.89B + $1.15B Option B = $4.04B total (2022-11-15) |
| Outcome | First-ever sample return from the lunar far side and the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Used the Queqiao-2 relay satellite for far-side comms. Samples revealed unexpectedly cohesive grain behavior and excavated material from the Moon's mantle. | Travelled ~1.4M km — at the time, furthest a privately funded spacecraft had flown. Software flagged the radar altimeter as faulty after the lander crossed a crater rim cliff and ignored its readings. Lander ran out of fuel hovering ~5 km above surface and free-fell. | Selected April 2021 as sole HLS provider for Artemis III. Architecture requires Super Heavy launch + multiple Starship tanker refueling flights in LEO + transit to NRHO + rendezvous with Orion (SLS). NASA OIG IG-26-004 (March 2026) flagged crew-rescue capability as open risk. October 2025: NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy reopened Artemis III lander contract to competition due to Starship development pace. |
Pure URL state — no JavaScript, no localStorage, no cookies. The comparison renders entirely on the server from the slugs in the query string. Bookmark or share the URL and the comparison reproduces exactly.
Underlying dataset: GET /api/moon/landers. Methodology: /moon/methodology.