| Surveyor Program  Following
up on the Rangers, the Surveyor series was the first U.S. effort
to make a soft landing on the Moon. Initially intended to
be a series of robotic scientific missions, the project's
focus was switched to engineering in support of the
Apollo program to land men on the Moon. The Surveyors
tested landing techniques designed to take American
astronauts safely to the Moon's surface.
The first Surveyor was launched from
Cape Canaveral on May 30, 1966, and landed on the Moon on
June 2, becoming the first spacecraft to make a
survivable "soft" landing beyond the Earth.
Surveyor 7, the last in the series, was launched on
January 7, 1968. Although one Surveyor crashed into the
Moon and another lost contact with Earth soon after lunar
impact, the program acquired almost 90,000 images from
five sites. These images would be invaluable to NASA in
helping to determine the best locations for manned
missions to the Moon.
Spacecraft Specifications
Mass at Launch 2,194-2,888
pounds
Mass at Landing 596-625 pounds
Height ~10 feet
Diameter 14 feet
Instrumentation
All contained television cameras. Some
had other tools and instruments to study lunar soil
consistency and composition.
Missions
| |
Launch Date |
Landing Site |
Notes |
| Surveyor 1 |
May 30, 1966 |
Ocean of Storms |
sent 11,240 pictures, revealing
details as small as 1/12th inch; operated until
January 7, 1967 |
| Surveyor 2 |
September 20, 1966 |
|
crashed into the Moon three days
after launch |
| Surveyor 3 |
April 17, 1967 |
Ocean of Storms |
carried a soil mechanics surface
sampler scoop; operated until May 4, 1967 |
| Surveyor 4 |
July 14, 1967 |
Sinus Medii |
signal lost 2-1/2 minutes after
lunar impact |
| Surveyor 5 |
September 8, 1967 |
Sea of Tranquility |
had magnets attached to the
footpads and an alpha scattering instrument for
chemical analysis of the lunar material; operated
until December 17, 1967 |
| Surveyor 6 |
November 7, 1967 |
Sinus Medii |
had magnets attached to the
footpads and an alpha scattering instrument for
chemical analysis of the lunar material; operated
until December 14, 1967; the first spacecraft to
lift off from the Moon |
| Surveyor 7 |
January 7, 1968 |
Tycho North Rim |
had magnets attached to the
footpads, as well as an alpha scattering
instrument for chemical analysis of the lunar
material and a soil mechanics surface sampler
scoop; operated until February 21, 1968 |
Below: Surveyor 3
participated in the only lunar surface rendezvous when
the Apollo 12 astronauts landed nearby in November 1969.
The human crew visited the 2-1/2-year-old lunar station,
photographed it and the site and brought some of its
parts back to Earth. This is one of the photographs taken
by that crew (the descriptions were added later).
Questions or comments about this
page?
"Past Missions--Surveyor 1-7." Past
Missions. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/past/surveyor.html
Dr. David R. Williams. "Surveyor (1966-1968)." Lunar
Exploration. National Space Science Data Center,
2006. nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/surveyor.html
Ranger Program
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