<P> On 14 December 2013 at 13: 12 UTC Chang'e 3 soft - landed a rover on the Moon . This was the first lunar soft landing since Luna 24 on 22 August 1976 . </P> <P> Progress in space exploration has recently broadened the phrase moon landing to include other moons in the Solar System as well . The Huygens probe of the Cassini--Huygens mission to Saturn performed a successful unmanned moon landing on Titan in 2005 . Similarly, the Soviet probe Phobos 2 came within 120 mi (190 km) of performing an unmanned moon landing on Mars' moon Phobos in 1989 before radio contact with that lander was suddenly lost . A similar Russian sample return mission called Fobos - Grunt ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian) launched in November 2011, but stalled in low Earth orbit . There is widespread interest in performing a future moon landing on Jupiter's Europa moon to drill down and explore the possible liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface . </P> <P> China is planning to land another rover and collect samples in the Chang'e 4 mission and return lunar soil samples by 2018 in the Chang'e 5 mission . </P> <P> ISRO, the Indian National Space agency, is planning a second version of Chandrayaan named Chandrayaan 2 . According to former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, "The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) hopes to land two rovers--one Indian and another Russian--on the Moon in 2018, as a part of its second Chandrayaan mission . The rover will be designed to move on wheels on the lunar surface, pick up samples of soil or rocks, do on - site chemical analysis and send the data to the mother - spacecraft Chandrayaan II, which will be orbiting above . Chandrayaan II will transmit the data to Earth ." The payloads have already been finalized . ISRO has mentioned that due to weight restrictions it will not be carrying any overseas payloads on this mission . The lander, named Vikram, is projected to weigh 1,250 kg, and the entire spacecraft will be launched by the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle . </P>

When was the last time the united states landed on the moon