Chinese probe successfully (!) crashes into the moon

Now, crashing into the moon doesn’t seem like something you’d do on purpose. You might soft-land on purpose. But crashing?

Yet, the Chinese spacecraft that crashed into the moon today follows a long history of intentional lunar crashes. Chang’e 1 lunar mapping mission came to an end with a bang…the latest in a long series of such impacts.

Crashing Rangers and LMs

In the 1960s, NASA sent a series of probes called Ranger to the moon. And they took pictures as they approached the surface—until they crashed. During Apollo, discarded lunar modules (the upper portions) were also crashed into the moon, to test the seismic devices left there by astronauts, and generate data.

India crashes, too!

And, most recently, the Indian probe called Moon Impactor Probe, (carried to the moon by its Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft), successfully crashed into the moon last November.

Of course, most times you crash into the moon because you haven’t yet figured out how to make a soft-landing—or you don’t want to spend the extra money. Let’s just call these “crash programs” to get to the moon…