Around a dozen landers are aiming for touchdown on the lunar surface next year, with the goal of developing the technology necessary to build a permanent human presence there.

This fusillade of launches is part of an ongoing campaign to ramp up exploration of the moon, fuelled in part by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme. This involves funding spacecraft from private companies, which carry a combination of NASA’s own science instruments and payloads from other customers.