What is the best place to land on The Moon?

Of the 2,023 named places on The Moon, Statio Tranquillitatis scores best at 24.4 out of 100 — 4.7 points easier than the median site. Ground: Flat ground — the easiest thing to land on and build across. The ranking is computed from each site's own latitude, longitude and landform class, not assigned.

Does it matter where on The Moon you land?

Yes. The Moon rates 29.1 out of 100 as a world, but that figure is identical everywhere on it. Sunlight, accessible water, radiation dose, surface temperature and the landform itself all vary with position, and across the named sites here they span roughly 11 points of difficulty.

How is the settlement difficulty of a site calculated?

Seven factors that genuinely vary across a surface: annual mean sunlight integrated over the orbit, distance to the latitudes where that body holds ice, radiation geometry inside any magnetosphere, equilibrium temperature at that latitude, what the IAU landform class implies about landing and building, line of sight to Earth on a tidally locked world, and distance to a place a spacecraft has already landed. Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are constant across a body and are counted in the world's own index instead.

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The most viable places on The Moon

All 2,023 named places on The Moon, scored one coordinate at a time on sunlight, water, radiation, temperature, ground and access — then ranked. Statio Tranquillitatis comes out first.

The Moon as a whole rates 29.1/100 to settle, and that single number is the same for every square metre of it. It is also the wrong number for a mission, because sunlight, water, radiation dose and the ground itself all change with where you stand. The ranking below re-asks the question at each of 2,023 catalogued coordinates and reports the difference from the median site — so a score of 29.1 here means “typical for The Moon”, not “good”.

Water on The Moon: LCROSS and M3 confirmed water ice in the permanently shadowed floors above about 80 degrees. The equatorial regolith holds parts per million, not a resource.

Ground truth: 17 spacecraft have landed on The Moon, and proximity to one counts toward a site's score — known bearing strength and slopes are worth real risk reduction.

1Statio TranquillitatisStatio1° N, 23° E0 km24.4-4.7

Ground: Flat ground — the easiest thing to land on and build across · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

2Planitia DescensusPlanitia7° N, 64° W25-4.1

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 26° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

3Sinus SuccessusSinus1° N, 59° E127 km25.6-3.5

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 31° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

4Mare SpumansMare1° N, 65° E143 km25.6-3.5

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 25° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

5Mare FecunditatisMare8° S, 54° E840 km25.7-3.4

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 36° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

6Mare UndarumMare7° N, 69° E245 km25.7-3.4

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 21° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

7Mare CognitumMare11° S, 22° W350 km25.7-3.4

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 65° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

8Lacus PerseverantiaeLacus8° N, 62° E70.6 km25.7-3.4

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 28° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

9Mare CrisiumMare16° N, 59° E556 km25.8-3.3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 30° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

10Mare TranquillitatisMare8° N, 31° E876 km25.8-3.3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 58° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

11Mare InsularumMare8° N, 31° W512 km25.8-3.3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 58° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

12Sinus AsperitatisSinus5° S, 27° E219 km25.8-3.3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 62° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

13Mare VaporumMare13° N, 4° E243 km25.9-3.2

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 76° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

14Oceanus ProcellarumOceanus21° N, 57° W2,592 km25.9-3.2

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 31° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

15Sinus MediiSinus2° N, 1° E287 km26-3.1

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 88° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

16Sinus HonorisSinus12° N, 18° E112 km26.1-3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 69° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

17Mare NectarisMare15° S, 35° E339 km26.1-3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 53° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

18Sinus ConcordiaeSinus11° N, 42° E159 km26.1-3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 46° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

19Sinus AmorisSinus20° N, 37° E189 km26.1-3

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 48° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

20Sinus FideiSinus18° N, 2° E70.7 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 72° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

21Lacus FelicitatisLacus19° N, 5° E98.5 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 71° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

22Lacus DolorisLacus17° N, 9° E103 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 71° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

23Lacus OdiiLacus19° N, 7° E72.7 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 70° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

24Lacus LenitatisLacus14° N, 12° E78.3 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 71° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

25Sinus AestuumSinus12° N, 8° W317 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 75° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

26DoubleAstronaut-named features1° N, 23° E0 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 67° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

27Little WestAstronaut-named features1° N, 23° E0 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 67° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

28WestAstronaut-named features1° N, 23° E0.2 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

29Lacus HiemalisLacus15° N, 14° E48 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 70° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

30Lacus GaudiiLacus16° N, 12° E88.5 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 70° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

31BlockAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

32SnowmanAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0.6 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

33SurveyorAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0.2 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

34HaloAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

35HeadAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0.1 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

36BenchAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0.2 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

37Sharp ApolloAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

38CrescentAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W2 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

39Middle CrescentAstronaut-named features3° S, 23° W0.4 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 66° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

40DoubletAstronaut-named features4° S, 17° W0.1 km26.2-2.9

Earth link: Near side — Earth stands 72° above the horizon and never moves · Water: Outside the ice-bearing latitudes

What this ranking cannot see

Elevation. Every score above comes from a latitude, a longitude and a feature class — never from a terrain model — so slope, local shadowing and the polar peaks of eternal light are invisible to it. That last one matters: on a world tilted barely a degree, a ridge top near the pole can catch sunlight almost continuously while a crater floor a few kilometres away has not seen the Sun in two billion years. This model scores the average surface at a latitude, so it reads poles as dark and ranks them accordingly. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually the reason — and the reason to read this as one input, not a verdict.

The Moon in 3D Every named place on The Moon