What is a soft landing on the lunar surface and why is it so difficult?

techcrunch.com

Landing can be of two types: crash landing and soft landing.

In a crash landing it collides with the surface at a high speed and then some outer part is damaged but the main part can function. It is technically easier.

A soft landing requires the vehicle to land safely and is complicated because the speed must be very low to land safely.

You must have noticed that when the planes land on a plane, their speed is very fast but when running on the runway they reduce their speed but there is no airstrip on the surface of the moon, so this method cannot work.

The second method that is used on Earth (especially in naval planes) is the use of parachutes but even if there is no atmosphere on the moon, this method cannot be used.

Now the only way is to reduce the speed and power of the engines by controlling them so that the balance of the forces of gravity and the power of the moon becomes such that the vehicle safely lands on the surface of the moon but any planet The gravitational force of the body keeps changing according to the location and for this reason it becomes a very complicated calculation and even a very small mistake in this calculation makes its path Can make a big difference. Perhaps this is what happened to Chandrayaan 2's Vikram J.

Now even if it is about soft landing, then there is another problem as well, finding the right place to land which can only happen after the vehicle reaches the surface.