lander.

A spacecraft designed to descend to and operate on a celestial body's surface.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• robotic lander
• lunar lander

On the page

The lander settled into the dust on three extended legs.

Usage notes

Primary category: sci-fi. Forms: Singular lander; plural landers. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: description, technology. Commonness: moderately common.