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The Five Countries to Land on the Moon, and When They Did It

Roughly 200 countries exist today, but only five have successfully landed a spacecraft on the Moon.

Achieving a controlled lunar landing remains one of the most difficult feats in space exploration, requiring decades of engineering expertise, precision navigation, and advanced propulsion systems. While many nations have reached the Moon or attempted landings, only a select group has completed a successful soft landing.

Using data from HowStuffWorks, this map highlights the five countries that have joined this exclusive club. Russia is shown in place of the USSR, which officially dissolved in 1991.

First Successful Moon Landings: A Chronology

Each country reached the Moon during a different era of space exploration, spanning nearly six decades from the Cold War space race to today’s renewed global competition. Here’s when each nation completed its first successful soft landing:

And here is a map of all 28 successful Moon landings by country:

Nearly every successful landing has occurred on the Moon’s near side, where communication with Earth is much easier. China is the only country to achieve successful soft landings on the lunar far side, with its Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 6 missions marking major milestones in robotic exploration.

The nature of lunar exploration is also changing. In 2025, Firefly Aerospace became the first privately funded company to complete a successful Moon landing with its Blue Ghost M1 mission, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Failed Landings and Other Missions

Even though achieving a soft, controlled landing is rare, there have been many more lunar missions by other countries.

Here are two recent missions that attempted soft landings but failed:

• 🇮🇱 Israel: The country’s Beresheet mission successfully entered lunar orbit in 2019, but ended with a crash landing.
• 🇷🇺 Russia: In its first attempt since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia’s Luna 25 mission crash landed in 2023. Russia is expected to have another go with Luna 27 in 2029-2030.

Meanwhile, several other countries and agencies have completed successful non-landing missions to the Moon, including Pakistan, Canada, Italy, the European Space Agency, and South Korea. Private companies have also become more active in lunar exploration.

Future Attempts

The race to join the Moon landing club is far from over. Several countries, along with a growing number of private companies, are developing lunar missions as governments and businesses prepare for a new era of Moon exploration tied to scientific research, resource prospecting, and future crewed missions.

Not every mission reaches the launch pad. For example, Canada’s planned lunar rover mission targeting 2029 was cancelled in March 2026, illustrating just how technically and financially challenging lunar exploration remains.

Which U.S. States Have the Most Vehicles Per 1,000 People?

Americans have nearly 298 million registered highway vehicles, but some states have far more vehicles than residents, while others have fewer than one vehicle for every person.

This map highlights the number of registered highway vehicles in each state per 1,000 people, using official 2024 highway data sourced from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The differences reflect a mix of population density, commercial fleet registrations, and the types of vehicles counted in federal registration data.

Montana: More Than Two Cars Per Person

Montana is the nation’s biggest outlier, with 2,174 registered highway vehicles per 1,000 residents. In total, the state recorded nearly 2.5 million vehicles in 2024, despite having a population of just 1.1 million people.

The following data table lists states by their per-capita vehicle rates in 2024.

Montanans do not necessarily have two to three vehicles apiece. Instead, several factors help explain how the state became such an outlier.

For one, a lack of sales tax makes the state attractive to many businesses registering commercial vehicle fleets, including businesses from outside Montana. This is especially relevant given the state’s large trucking, logging, mining, and agricultural sectors. Notably, over 60% of the vehicles on Montana’s highways are trucks.

There’s also the trailer component: livestock, RV, and utility trailers are all counted as vehicles under Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) registration. Montana had nearly as many trailers on its highways in 2024 as passenger cars.

The Great Plains and the City

Part of the Montana story is also a broader regional divide between larger, more rural states in the country’s interior and more densely populated coastal states.

States like North Dakota (1,357) and South Dakota (1,518) are characterized by smaller towns separated by longer distances, making driving, especially on highways, a practical necessity. This pattern appears across the Great Plains, including in Montana, Iowa (1,194), and Wyoming (1,495).

On the other end of the spectrum are denser, more urbanized states where people have more transportation options. For example, the Northeast corridor links cities like Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia through passenger rail and other transit options, reducing the need for household vehicle ownership. The same applies in New York (1,049), where car ownership costs are high in the country’s largest city, as well as in Washington, D.C. (438).

Delaware (426), a small and heavily urbanized state, has the lowest per-capita vehicle rate in the country.

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