From cfleon:
Are probes like the soviet Luna 9 & 13 considered soft landers or hard
landers? Years ago, all the sources that I came across insisted that
soft landers had to use braking rockets to cut velocity, and that the
Lunas (and, by extention, probes that use airbags, like MER) were
survivable hard landers, ejected by a bus which then crashed onto the
surface. Is this distinction still used?

There was a lengthy discussion along these lines several years ago here
when I asserted the point that the Soviets had the capability for
landing a person on the Moon well before Apollo 8.

Some forum members freaked because they refused to accept the notion of
'landing' as inclusive of impacts ('hard landing'). There may be some
points from that old discussion that you find helpful.


~ CT