lander

American

[lan-der] / ˈlæn dər /

noun

a space probe designed to land on a planet or other solid celestial body.

lander British

/ ˈlændə /

noun

a spacecraft designed to land on a planet or other body Compare orbiter

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of lander

First recorded in 1960–65; land + -er ¹

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

lander

No lander has ever operated there, so researchers must rely on remote sensing observations from telescopes and spacecraft.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 12, 2026

Tesla’s Musk, who since a 2037 Mars lander accident has been transitioning to robot form, has also been caught flat-footed by the decline in energy costs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

The Falcon 9 launched in January 2025 carrying Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander, a private mission that made a soft landing on the Moon.

From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026

Blue Origin is moving its Blue Moon MK1 lander through integrated testing ahead of its planned lunar delivery mission.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

If the two vehicles’ orbits didn’t coincide, the two in the lander would be stranded forever in the vacuum of space.

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023