Why landing on the moon is proving more difficult today than 50 years ago

China and India have both placed robotic landers on the moon, Russia ’s Luna 25 crashed landed last year .

Landers built by private companies have a 100% failure record on the lunar surface.

One fundamental challenge, says Jan Wörner , former director general of the European Space Agency .

But the strategy should pay off, he adds, because companies learn from their failures. “It still ends up being cheaper over the total number of missions,” he says, “Even if the first few maybe crash.”.