Landing · Soviet Union · Lavochkin design bureau (USSR)
Luna 23
FailedMare Crisium
Facts last verified against primary sources on 2026-10-10. Mission page →
Landing
no earlier than Nov 1974Target
12.67°N 62.15°E
Located after landing
Landed
no earlier than Nov 1974
Hard landing
Sun · today
+69.55°
SE (az 132°) · whole disk up
Earth · today
+23.94°
W (az 267°) · direct link to Earth possible
Located after landing
2 km reference ring
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Site plan
North up, true scale around the target point. Arrows: where the Sun and the Earth sit on the horizon at the current time.
The sky from the landing site
The landing date is not set yet, so this shows the next 30 days at the target. Predicted by JPL Horizons for a smooth Moon: hills and crater walls are not included, and near the poles they can hide a Sun that is a degree or two up.
- Sun up
- 51% of the window
- Next sunset
- 2026-10-28 03:00 UTC
- Earth up
- 100% of the window
- Earth elevation
- 20.2° to 33.3°
Source: JPL Horizons observer tables (DE441, Moon mean-Earth frame), Sun and Earth seen from 12.667°N 62.151°E at 0 m on the 1,737.4 km sphere, hourly, 2026-10-19 to 2026-11-18. “Sun up” means any part of the disk is above the smooth horizon. Method: landing-site sky.
Engine plume: reference distances
- 155 mApollo 12 → Surveyor 3. Apollo 12 landed about 155 m from Surveyor 3, and its plume sandblasted the older lander. source
- 600 m1 cm gravel, Apollo-sized lander. Gravel 1 cm across leaves a Lunar Module–sized lander's plume at about 30 m/s and lands within 600 m; NASA gives up to about 1.5 km for 1–10 cm rocks. source
- 2 kmNASA heritage-site standoff. NASA recommends targeting touchdown at least 2 km from U.S. lander heritage sites (0.5 km from impact sites). source
No CLPS or Artemis lander has a published plume keep-out distance; these are reference cases, drawn around the target point, not limits for this lander. Fine dust leaves a plume at up to kilometres per second and is not stopped by any ring. No recorded hardware is within 2 km of the target point.
Hardware already nearby
- Luna 24Lavochkin design bureau (USSR) · 1976 · soft landing2.3 km NE
Great-circle distance from the target point on the 1,737.4 km sphere, to landing and impact sites in our curated table.
Timeline
No milestones are published yet.