Talk:Lander (spacecraft)

Confusion about Mars 2 & 3 landers

According to the articles relating to Mars 2 & 3: Mars 2 crashed to Martian surface and Mars 3 did a touchdown and malfunctioned in about 15 seconds. Which article is true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.167.2.36 (talk) 11:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Better definition?

Ladies and gentlemen, the following wording seems to fit better

type of spacecraft, designed for descending the surface of an astronomical body

although I'm reluctant to research and discuss. Happy edits, Ukrained2012 (talk) 16:28, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• ZhurongIcon.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:18, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Off topic section?

A section of this article - Lander (spacecraft)#Impactors, does not seem related to this article about spacecraft landers; the main objective of an Impactor is to crash into an entity, and not land on it. Would it be more appropriate to remove that section from this article, since there already exists a main article on probe Impactors Deliberate crash landings on extraterrestrial bodies? Riverskysun (talk) 01:43, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

The two have slightly different scopes, apparently; impactors are objects whose overall purpose was specifically to impact, while List of spacecraft intentionally crashed into extraterrestrial bodies seems to deal with spacecraft that were expected to crash at the end of their mission, but whose mission was not significantly or mostly about the impact itself (e.g. a probe such as MESSENGER). I agree however the impactors could very well be merged into that page. cyclopia^speak! 10:00, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, readers tend to think of all landers as soft-landers, but that's overly general. There's definitely an overlap between this article's Impactors section and List of spacecraft intentionally crashed into extraterrestrial bodies. Ideally the section should cover the concept. Its current list-like format fails at that. Adding well-source material here about the concept would be an improvement to the article. (— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk) 14:35, 17 September 2026 (UTC)