What does "soft-land" mean?

To land (a vehicle or other payload) on the surface of a body in such a manner that it survives the landing mostly or entirely intact and is usable or able to operate, at least briefly, following touchdown.

Soft-land

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1
To land (a vehicle or other payload) on the surface of a body in such a manner that it survives the landing mostly or entirely intact and is usable or able to operate, at least briefly, following touchdown. intransitive, transitive
"The Spirit and Opportunity rovers were soft-landed on Mars in 2004."

Example

More examples

"The Spirit and Opportunity rovers were soft-landed on Mars in 2004."

Related phrases

soft landing

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.