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 | JAXA | ispace |
| Prime contractor | China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) | Mitsubishi Electric | Draper |
| Status | In development | Landed | In development |
| Customer | CNSA | JAXA | NASA-CLPS |
| Launch date | 2026-08 (NET) | 2023-09-06 | 2027 (NET) |
| Landing date | — | 2024-01-19 | — |
| Landing site | Shackleton crater illuminated rim, lunar south pole | Near Shioli crater, Mare Nectaris (~10 m precision vs 100 m target) | Schrödinger Basin, lunar far side near south pole |
| Payload | 18 science payloads across orbiter, lander, rover, mini-hopper, and Queqiao-2 (2026-05-28) | LEV-1 (2.1 kg hopper) + LEV-2 'SORA-Q' (0.25 kg sphere) (2024-01-19) | 300 kg surface payload capacity (2026-05-28) |
| Contract value | — | — | $73M (2022-07-21) |
| Outcome | China's first dedicated lunar south-pole prospecting mission. Mini-flying probe hops into permanently shadowed regions to sample for water-ice volatiles. Italian laser retroreflector aboard the lander. | First Japanese soft landing; made Japan the 5th nation to soft-land on the Moon. One of two main engines failed at ~50 m altitude; lander touched down on its side but still met 100-m precision goal. Survived four lunar-night cycles despite not being designed for it; declared concluded 2024-08-23. | Pivoted from Series-2 to APEX 1.0 architecture for higher payload capacity and far-side comms via two relay satellites. Far-side polar landing supports NASA's Endurance-A sample-return precursor science. |
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.