---
type: source
title: "CLPS Commercial Lunar Landing Track Record: 1 Clean Success in 5 Attempts (20%) Through 2025"
author: "Multiple sources (NASA, SpaceflightNow, NASASpaceFlight)"
url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Services
date: 2026-03-18
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: report
status: enrichment
priority: high
triage_tag: claim
tags: [CLPS, lunar-landing, reliability, commercial-space, moon]
processed_by: astra
processed_date: 2026-03-18
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

Comprehensive track record of NASA CLPS commercial lunar landing attempts through 2025:

**Peregrine (Astrobotic, Jan 2024):** FAILED. Propellant leak in transit, never reached Moon. First CLPS mission.

**IM-1/Odysseus (Intuitive Machines, Feb 2024):** PARTIAL SUCCESS. First US lunar landing since 1972. Touched down at south pole but fell on its side. Range altimetry briefly lost during descent. Operated 7 days, transmitted data from all 5 active payloads before power depletion.

**Blue Ghost M1 (Firefly, Mar 2025):** FULL SUCCESS. First fully successful commercial Moon landing. Upright landing at Mare Crisium. 14 days surface ops + 5 hours into lunar night. 10 NASA payloads delivered. Longest commercial operations on the Moon.

**IM-2/Athena (Intuitive Machines, Mar 2025):** PARTIAL SUCCESS. Carried PRIME-1 drill (TRIDENT) for water ice prospecting at Mons Mouton (south pole). Landed on side in shadowed crater at -173°C. TRIDENT demonstrated full range of motion but could not drill. Power depleted within ~1 day. ISRU characterization mission effectively lost.

**ispace M2/Resilience (Jun 2025):** FAILED. Crash landing. Technical cause: anomaly in Laser Range Finder (LRF) hardware. Not software, propulsion, or other systems. Intended to deliver micro-rover to lunar surface.

**Summary statistics:** 1/5 clean success (20%), 2/5 partial (tipped, 40%), 2/5 failed (40%). NASA pre-program estimate was 50% success rate (Thomas Zurbuchen). Actual clean success rate is significantly below expectations.

**2026 manifest:** Griffin-1/Astrobotic (Jul 2026, south pole), IM-3 (H2 2026, Reiner Gamma), Blue Ghost M2 (late 2026, far side). ispace M3/APEX slipped to 2027 (engine redesign to VoidRunner).

## Agent Notes
**Triage:** [CLAIM] — The 20% clean landing success rate is a specific, disagreeable claim with direct evidence. It implies landing reliability, not ISRU technology readiness, is the binding constraint on lunar infrastructure deployment.
**Why this matters:** Every downstream lunar ISRU system must survive landing first. The PRIME-1 drill on IM-2 was ready to work but the lander tipped over. LunaGrid cables, Interlune cameras — all face the same bottleneck.
**What surprised me:** The 20% clean success rate. I expected commercial landers to be unreliable early but the rate is worse than NASA's own 50% estimate. The pattern is also concerning: 2/3 tipping failures suggest a systematic problem with landing stability, not random failures.
**KB connections:** This creates a new binding constraint below launch cost. The existing claim [[launch cost reduction is the keystone variable that unlocks every downstream space industry at specific price thresholds]] is true for orbit but not for the lunar surface. Landing reliability is an independent bottleneck.
**Extraction hints:** Claim: "Commercial lunar landing reliability (20% clean success through 2025) is the binding constraint on lunar ISRU timelines, independent of launch cost or ISRU technology readiness."

## Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: the 30-year space economy attractor state is a cislunar industrial system with propellant networks lunar ISRU orbital manufacturing and partial life support closure
WHY ARCHIVED: Landing reliability data challenges the assumption that the ISRU pathway is gated primarily by technology readiness or launch cost — the landers themselves are the bottleneck


## Key Facts
- NASA pre-CLPS program estimate was 50% success rate (Thomas Zurbuchen)
- CLPS track record through mid-2025: 1/5 clean success (20%), 2/5 partial (tipped landers, 40%), 2/5 failed (40%)
- Blue Ghost M1 operated 14 days on surface + 5 hours into lunar night, longest commercial lunar operations
- IM-2 landed in shadowed crater at -173°C at Mons Mouton (south pole)
- ispace M2 failure was specifically Laser Range Finder hardware anomaly, not software or propulsion
