Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post
Peregrine was an abort, not a fail. A mechanical defect was detected and the decision was made to bring it back to Earth for analysis instead of continuing with the landing attempt. It is not certain that it would have failed to land, the Powers That Be merely decided that analyzing the fault was more important than making the attempt.

Odysseus was a perfect landing - until a mechanical defect in one of the landing struts caused it to not be fully upright, making it only partially operational.

The two failed Japanese missions failed due to apparent software bugs.

This means with the possible exception of Luna 25 (where there's no clear idea what happened - official statement is that there was an incorrect burn time, but the nature of the crash is preventing analysis as to why), none of them failed because the people who launched them don't know how to land on the Moon. Note that at least a couple of the failures were in "we're deliberately trying to see what corners we can cut to keep weight down, because every single gram we can save makes moon launches cheaper" situations.
A propellant fuel tank on Peregrine ruptured after being over pressurized making a soft landing impossible. They didn't "bring it back to earth for analysis". They caused the probe to brake up during reentry over the Pacific so it wouldn't contribute to the space debris problem.

Odysseus was not a perfect landing. A laser rangefinder failed to operate. This caused the probe to land too hard on too steep a slope resulting in a leg crumpling.

As far as Luna 25, Roscosmos is very tightlipped about their failures. I imagine they have a pretty good idea what happened even if they haven't told the rest of the world...

Quote Originally Posted by Chronos View Post
Landing on the Moon is really, incredibly easy, by space standards. It's so easy that 3 out of 8 recent programs managed to do it on their first try. How many space systems have an initial success rate that high? How many of any major program has an initial success rate that high?
Russia, USA, Japan, and PRC have all landed probes on the moon before. This was India's second attempt to soft land a probe. So I am not sure what you mean by "first try".

Compare these results to NASA's "Surveyor" program which landed 5 out of 7 probes on the moon in the 1960s. And that was using an onboard 1960s computer.