The race to the Moon's south pole

The last time anyone walked on the Moon was December 1972, when Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 spent three days in the Taurus-Littrow valley. Every Apollo landing was near the Moon's equator. The next wave of missions is heading somewhere very different.

Why the south pole

Near the Moon's poles, some craters are so deep that sunlight never reaches their floors. Scientists believe water ice has been trapped there for billions of years. Ice is valuable in space: it can be melted for drinking water, and split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket fuel. A base near that ice would not have to bring everything from Earth.

Who has been there

• August 2023: India's Chandrayaan-3 made the first landing near the lunar south pole, making India the fourth country to land softly on the Moon.
• January 2019: China's Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the Moon's far side, with its Yutu-2 rover.
• NASA's Artemis program plans to land astronauts near the south pole, and China has said it aims to land its own astronauts on the Moon before 2030.

Visit the landing sites

On One Turn, open Space and choose The Moon. You can tap the Apollo landing sites, Luna 9, Chang'e 4 and Chandrayaan-3, see NASA's photos from the surface, and watch a month of the Moon's orbit in a few seconds.